Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/313

 "There's something tells me (but it is not love) I would not lose you; and you know yourself, Hate counsels not in such a quality."

An ordinary woman might have enmeshed him in a cocoon of delicate coquetries: any woman dead in love, and a little less than strict to an oath, would have managed in some way to provoke that lead casket into twinkling a hint to him. But she is too honest for either. A woman with a soul as tender as it is firm, here she stands dismayed as Destiny is about to rattle its dice upon her heart: happiness, and a future worthy of her, all at stake. For though her mental resources might compete with any fate, she is all woman, made to be a wife, and without wifehood to feel herself at one essential point impaired,—all the more defrauded because so well endowed. How she clings for support to the few moments that yet stand before his choice! She wishes there were more of them to stay her.

"I pray you tarry;                 for, in choosing wrong, I lose your company; therefore, forebear awhile."

She has no courage now: love, when it stole her heart, found that trait too, and added it to the booty.

"Lest you should not understand me well (And yet a maiden hath no tongue but thought), I would detain you here some month or two, Before you venture for me."

The noble lady's plea fills us with admiring pity: we admire to see the strong, beautiful woman so downcast with this new emotion which Heaven has quartered