Page:Theresa.pdf/15

Rh two years longer. Somewhat reluctantly, Ursaline accompanied them; for her dread of their secret being discovered almost overcame her distress at the bare thought of her foster-child. "The Baron will kill us if he hears of your marriage—and yet I did it for the best: I thought he must be dead, and I knew you ought to marry none but a noble. Who could have thought Count Adalbert would have proved so false-hearted?" Such were the constant lamentations of the old nurse whenever they were alone: but the secret she had to keep was too much for her; and six weeks after leaving their cottage, Ursaline was safe from Von Haitzinger's anger in the grave. Theresa wept for her long and bitterly: many sorrows took the semblance of one. Treated as a child, offered the amusements and the rewards of a child, when her heart was full of the grief and care of a woman—hourly she was more and more thrown upon herself. Her father, who considered every moment lost which was not given to the pursuit of education, debarred himself from her society. It was a sacrifice, but to Theresa it appeared choice; and he thus repelled the confidence which kindness and familiar intercourse might have encouraged. She soon took an interest in the employments selected for her—they served to divert her attention from a remembrance that grew continually more painful. Every step she gained in knowledge, every experience brought by reading or