not disguise from the reader, I fell romantically and ardently in love.




CHAPTER II

AURELIA AND THE DOCTOR


It was, I know very well, the aim and desire of this beautiful lady to
approve herself mother to the exile thus cast upon her hands, and it was
so as much by reason of her innate charity as of her pride in her
husband's credit. To blame an ambition so laudable would be impossible,
nor is blame intended to lie in recording the fact that she was a year
my junior, though two years a wife. Such was the case, however, and it
did not fit her for the position she wished to occupy. Nor indeed did
her beauties of person and mind, unless a childish air and sprightly
manner, cloudy-dark hair, a lovely mouth and bosom of snow, a caressing
voice, and candour most surprising because most innocent, can be said to
adapt a young lady to be mother to a young man. Be these things as they
may--inflaming arrows full of danger, shafts of charity, pious
artillery, as you will--they were turned full play upon me. From the
first moment of my seeing her she set herself to put me at ease, to make
me an intimate of her house, to make herself, I may say in no wrong
sense, an inmate of my heart--and God knoweth, God knoweth how she
succeeded.

Aurelia! Impossibly fair, inexpressibly tender and wise, with that
untaught wisdom of the child; daughter of pure religion, as I saw thee