Page:The Ladies' Cabinet of Fashion, Music & Romance 1832.pdf/108

Rh the morbid state of their feelings, (and it was in their case a most exclusive and unsympathizing species of morbidity,) in regard to the deaths of their parents and their brother. No levity passed their lips or marked their behaviour in relation to these sad events ; but they had reasoned themselves into acquiescence. Was it the acquiescence of religious hope and faith ? No it was the dull intoxication, the diseased imaginings of scepticism. The twin-brothers declared there was no future state of rewards and punishments,-that the present was all to them, that they were perfectly happy, and hoped not, wished not, for more than they enjoyed. Yet each declared that he would not survive the other one hour. That they should never be separated in life, in death, or in the grave. Spotless and inoffensive was the conduct of the twin-brothers to all around them ; yet I began to dread their presence, and conjure up frightful images of the future relative to them. I set about speculating, too, concerning what the results might have been had they been separated and planted under distinct and different influences, when they were thrown forcibly, so to speak, upon one another and into each other's arms, on first coming to our academy, or when first the reasoning faculties as well as the most subtle influences began to operate strongly upon their peculiar temperaments. But now it appeared to me that their destinies were completely fashioned, and that these destinies should some day become the theme of astonishment and appalling forebodings. I sometimes fancied that I was doomed to be particularly cognizant of their daily history and fate, and like other persons, subject to periods of strong, nervous alarm, I almost wished that my career might be closed before theirs. I left the academy of B——, and for several years lost sight of the Dangerfields. Afterwards, however, I understood that they had spent a good deal of their youth in foreign parts, and that they did not return to take up their permanent abode on their patrimonial property till by law they were entitled to be the uncontrouled masters of themselves and of all which their father had bequeathed them. By an arrangement which was certainly the most fair, lands , goods, chattels, and privileges were equally divided by the parental settlement between the brothers. Indeed, had a different distribution taken place, there is every reason to believe it would have been inoperative. The Dangerfields lived exclusives upon their estates as they had done, especially at the latter period, at school ; that is to say,