Page:Romance & Reality 3.pdf/246

244 a feeling or a thought in common, with only a cold and comfortless knowledge of superiority to console them for being utterly unappreciated—who have felt words rise to the lip, and then checked them from a conviction that they would not be comprehended—they, and they alone, can enter into the pleasure of speaking and being understood, and making conversation a medium not only to express wants, but ideas. Beatrice had lived too much in solitude not to be simple in her confidence. To those who have never been deceived, it seems so natural to confide in those we love. Besides, a happy attachment has such an enjoyment in its expression; and she was too young not to have a girl's pleasure in talking of her lover. No heart in early life was ever yet a sealed fountain. It is the unhappy love—the betrayed, or the unrequited—that shrouds itself in silence. But in the girl, young and affectionate, out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh. The timidity of pronouncing the beloved name once overcome, it is a fond indulgence to dwell on expanding hopes, or to express gentle fears, for the very sake of having them combated. When Beatrice repressed her