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The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World by Harriet Vaughan Cheney
page 64 of 210 (30%)
gradually yielded to the charm which led him daily to the house of Mad.
Rossville. Constant intercourse and familiar acquaintance strengthened
the influence, which Luciè's sweetness and vivacity had created, and he
soon loved her with the fervor and purity of a young and
unsophisticated heart. Yet he loved in silence,--for his future plans
were frustrated, his ambitious hopes were blighted; a writ of banishment
and proscription hung over his father's house, and what had he to offer
to one endowed by nature and fortune with gifts, which ranked her with
the proudest and noblest in the land! But love needs not the aid of
words; and the sentiments of the heart, beaming in an ingenuous
countenance, are more forcible than any language which the lips can
utter. Luciè was too artless to disguise the feelings which she was, as
yet, scarce conscious of cherishing; but Arthur read in the smile and
blush which ever welcomed his approach, the sigh which seemed to regret
his departure, and the eloquent expression of an eye, which varied with
every emotion of her soul, a tale of tenderness as ardent and confiding
as his own. The future was unheeded in the dream of present enjoyment;
for who, that loves, can doubt of happiness, or bear to look forward to
the melancholy train of dark and disappointed hours which time may
unfold!

In the midst of these dawning hopes, Arthur Stanhope was called to a
distant part of the kingdom on business, which nearly concerned his
father's private interest. Luciè wept at his departure; and, for the
first time, his brow was clouded in her presence, and his heart chilled
by the bodings of approaching evil. Several weeks passed away, and he
was still detained from home; to add to his uneasiness, no tidings from
thence had reached him, since the early period of his absence. Public
rumor, indeed, told him that new persecutions had gone forth against the
puritans; and the inflexible temper of his father, who had long been
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