was sweetness in the tears which the assurance of his love and the
tenderness of his remonstrance had called forth. She met him: how
could she refuse? and the struggle was past. Though not "convinced"
she was "persuaded;" for her heart, which refused his reasonings,
melted at his reproaches and his grief. But she would not consent to
unite her fate with him at once, for the evils of that step to his
interests were immediate and near; she was only persuaded to permit
their correspondence and occasional meetings, in which, however
imprudent they might be for herself, the disadvantages to her lover
were distant and remote. It was of him only that she thought; for him
she trembled; for him she was the coward and the woman; for herself
she had no fears, and no forethought.

And Algernon was worthy of this devoted love, and returned it as it
was given. Man's love, in general, is a selfish and exacting
sentiment: it demands every sacrifice and refuses all. But the nature
of Mordaunt was essentially high and disinterested, and his honour,
like his love, was not that of the world: it was the ethereal and
spotless honour of a lofty and generous mind, the honour which custom
can neither give nor take away; and, however impatiently he bore the
deferring of a union, in which he deemed that he was the only
sufferer, he would not have uttered a sigh or urged a prayer for that
union, could it, in the minutest or remotest degree, have injured or
degraded her.

These are the hearts and natures which make life beautiful; these are
the shrines which sanctify love; these are the diviner spirits for
whom there is kindred and commune with everything exalted and holy in
heaven and earth. For them Nature unfolds her hoarded poetry and her
hidden spells; for their steps are the lonely mountains, and the still