Page:Paul Clifford Vol 3.djvu/146

138 birth of her ill-starred affection to the crisis it had now acquired. "Why did I not wrestle with it at first?" she said bitterly. "Why did I allow myself so easily to love one unknown to me, and equivocal in station, despite the cautions of my uncle and the whispers of the world?" Alas! Lucy did not remember, that at the time she was guilty of this weakness, she had not learned to reason as she since reasoned. Her faculties were but imperfectly awakened; her experience of the world was utter ignorance. She scarcely knew that she loved, and she knew not at all that the delicious and excited sentiment which filled her being could ever become as productive of evil and peril as it had done now; and even had her reason been more developed, and her resolutions more strong, does the exertion of reason and resolution always avail against the master-passion? Love, it is true, is not unconquerable; but how few have ever, mind and soul, coveted the conquest! Disappointment makes a vow, but the heart records it not. Or, in the noble image of one who has so tenderly and so truly portrayed the feelings of her own sex,—