Page:Libussa, Duchess of Bohemia; also, The Man Without a Name.djvu/112

96 agency of which the progress from the first acquaintance to love is much more rapid than that from the ranks to the epaulette. In the present instance, it is true, the parties did not come immediately to a verbal understanding; but they knew how to make each other acquainted with their sentiments, for their looks met half way, and told what their timid lips did not as yet dare to communicate. The neglectful mother, owing to the bustle in the house, had just at the most inopportune moment suppressed the sentinel before the door of her daughter’s heart; and as this important post was unguarded, the cunning smuggler Amor profited by the occasion to sneak in during the twilight unperceived. When once in possession, he gave to the young lady quite different advice from what her mother used to do. He, the most inveterate enemy of ceremony, made his obedient pupil soon overcome the prejudice of rank and birth, and the belief that lovers could be classified and registered like the beetles and worms of a collection of dead insects. The freezing pride of ancestry melted as quickly in her soul, as the oddly shaped flower-tendrils upon a frozen window-pane, when warmed by the rays of a lovely sun. Emily dispensed in her lover with pedigree and patent of nobility, and went