Page:Romance & Reality 3.pdf/317

Rh utterly have I wasted! for how much discontent and ingratitude am I responsible! I have been self-indulged from my childhood upwards—I have fretted with imaginary sorrows, and desired imaginary happiness: and when my heart beat with the feelings of womanhood, it set up a divinity, and its worship was idolatrous! "Sinful it was to love as I loved Edward Lorraine; and truly it has had its reward. I loved him selfishly, engrossingly, to the exclusion of the hopes of Heaven, and the affections of earth. I knelt with the semblance of prayer, but an earthly image was the idol: I prayed but for him. I cared for no amusement—I grew disgusted with all occupation—I loved none else around me. I slept, and he was in my dreams—I awoke, and he was my very first thought. Too soon, and yet too late, I learnt to what a frail and foolish vision I had yielded. A storm of terrible passions swept over me. I loathed, I hated my nearest friends. My shame amounted to madness: fear alone kept me from suicide. I repulsed the love that was yet mine—I disdained the many blessings that my lot still possessed—I forgot my religion, and outraged my God, by kneeling at a shrine which was not