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58 the mind filled with those dreaming thoughts which haunt the favourite path in the shrubbery, or under the old trees of the avenue; a few evenings passed singing those songs he once heard; or during a chain of those romantic plans which occupy the thoughts while the fingers are busy with lacework or satin-stitch needlework—why, a love dream has no greater assistant;—again I say, a lover must have few merits indeed, whom a few such mornings and evenings do not raise into a standard of perfection; and till, from thinking how happy one might be with him, it seems next to an impossibility to be happy without him. Every girl has a natural fancy for enacting the heroine—and, generally speaking, a very harmless fancy it is, after all. Certainly, the image of Lorraine was very often present to Emily. Occupation she had none but what she made for herself—objects of affection, none; and her uncle's death gave a shade of sadness to her sentiments, the best calculated for making them indelible; while the worst of her present mode of life—especially to one so imaginative, and whose feelings, though so timid, were so keen—was, that it passed in indolent melancholy, too likely to become habitual. One