"My wife! my wife!" said Osborne, looking on her with a rapturous gaze
of love and admiration--and carrying her allusion to the consent of
their families up to the period when he might legitimately give her that
title--"My wife," he exclaimed, "my young, my beautiful, my pure and
unspotted wife. Heavens! and is--is the day surely to come when I am to
call you so!"

The beautiful girl hung her head a moment as if abashed, then gliding
timidly towards him, leant upon his shoulder, and putting her lips up to
his ear, with a blush as much of delight as of modesty, whispered--"My
husband, my husband, why should not these words, dear Charles, be as
sweet a charm to my heart, as those you've mentioned are to yours. I
would, but I cannot add--no, I will not suffer it," she exclaimed, on
his attempting, in the prostration of the moment, to embrace her. "You
must not presume upon the sincerity of an affectionate and ingenuous
heart. Farewell, dear Charles, until we can see each other without a
consciousness that we are doing wrong." Saying which, she extended her
hand to him, and in a moment was on her way home.

And was the day to come when he could call her his? Alas! that day was
never registered in the records of time.

Oh! how deeply beloved was our heroine by her family, when her moods of
mind and state of spirits fixed the tone of their domestic enjoyments
and almost influenced the happiness of their lives. O gentle and pure
spirit, what heart cannot love thee, when those who knew thee best
gathered their affections so lovingly around thee, the star of their
hearth--the idol of their inner shrine--the beautiful, the meek, the
affectionate, and even then, in consequence of thy transcendant charms,
the far-famed Fawn of Springvale!