Page:The Ladies' Cabinet of Fashion, Music & Romance 1832.pdf/114

Rh " Never, I hope. Were your friendship to fail me, Mary, I should be a wretch indeed."

At that moment Mary was summoned to the drawing-room to see her cousin, who had just arrived. As soon as Helen could compose herself, and drive the cloud from her brow, she joined the party below. When she entered the room she saw a gentleman standing before Miss Adams, with both her hands clasped in his own, and his strikingly intelligent face lighted up with the most brilliant animation. Mary's cheek wore the flush of excitement, and her eyes sparkled with more than usual pleasure, as she presented the two beings most dear to her on earth to each other.

" I am sure you will love Helen," she said to her cousin the next morning. " And I am so glad she was not disappointed in you."

" Love her !" exclaimed Melton, " such an angel should be adored. I have never before seen any creature so transcendently beautiful."

"Always in raptures, Charles ," said Mary with a smile, but it was a faint one, and she knew not why it pained her to hear Melton bestow such enthusiastic praise on one she herself so truly loved. She had not yet become familar with that most mysterious of all things- the human heart. She knew not that she had to feel that bitterness of all convictions to a proud woman : that the heart, with all its green unwithered affections, may be given to one who would cast it from him as the most valueless of all possessions. Her cousin had unconsciously become to her an object of deeper interest than all the world beside, but it was long before Mary discovered the real nature of her feelings. It was not until she saw him devoted to another, that she knew she loved him. When she was convinced of this, and felt that she had been jealous of her dearest friend, the whole world appeared to her a hideous desert, and she would gladly, in that hour of deep suffering, have for ever closed her eyes on it. She saw that Melton loved Helen, and she unconscious of Mary's attachment, gave her young heart, with its intense feelings and treasured tenderness, into his keeping without reserve. The cloud that had so frequently shadowed her bright brow, was now never seen ; for in the new feelings that filled her heart, she found such unalloyed happiness, that her thoughts now seldom reverted to her situation, and the idea, that perhaps her father might not be disposed to sanction the engagement she had conditionally formed with her lover, was sedulously driven from her mind when it did in-