until the family had retired, stole quietly to my bed. Scarce any sleep,
however, visited my eyes that night! I lay overwhelmed with mortification,
and meditating how I might meet the family in the morning. The idea of
ridicule was always intolerable to me; but to endure it on a subject by
which my feelings had been so much excited seemed worse than death. I
almost determined, at one time, to get up, saddle my horse, and ride off, I
knew not whither.

At length I came to a resolution. Before going down to breakfast, I sent
for Sophy, and employed her as embassador to treat formally in the matter.
I insisted that the subject should be buried in oblivion; otherwise I would
not show my face at table. It was readily agreed to; for not one of the
family would have given me pain for the world. They faithfully kept their
promise. Not a word was said of the matter; but there were wry faces, and
suppressed titters, that went to my soul; and whenever my father looked me
in the face, it was with such a tragi-comical leer--such an attempt to pull
down a serious brow upon a whimsical mouth--that I had a thousand times
rather he had laughed outright.

* * * * *

For a day or two after the mortifying occurrence just related, I kept as
much as possible out of the way of the family, and wandered about the
fields and woods by myself. I was sadly out of tune; my feelings were all
jarred and unstrung. The birds sang from every grove, but I took no
pleasure in their melody; and the flowers of the field bloomed unheeded
around me. To be crossed in love is bad enough; but then one can fly to
poetry for relief, and turn one's woes to account in soul-subduing stanzas.
But to have one's whole passion, object and all, annihilated, dispelled,
proved to be such stuff as dreams are made of--or, worse than all, to be