Page:The Naval Officer (1829), vol. 2.djvu/163

 to see the lovely girl, whose hold on my heart and affection was infinitely stronger than I had ever supposed. Darting from the chaise, I flew into the sitting-room, where she usually passed her morning. I was now in my twenty-second year; my figure was decidedly of a handsome cast; my face, what I knew most women admired. My personal advantages were heightened by the utmost attention to dress; the society of the fair Acadians had very much polished my manners, and I had no more of the professional roughness of the sea, than what, like the crust on the port-wine, gave an agreeable flavour; my countenance was as open and as ingenuous as my heart was deceitful and desperately wicked.

Emily rose with much agitation, and in an instant was clasped in my arms: not that the movement was voluntary on her part; it was wholly on mine. She rather recoiled; but for an instant seemed to have forgotten the fatal communication which her father had made to