Falkner by Mary Shelley

There is an impatient spirit in the young, that will not suffer them to take into consideration the pauses that occur between events. That which they do not see move, they believe to be stationary. Falkner was surprised by the silence of several days on the part of Neville; but he did not the less expect and prepare for the time, when he should be called upon to render an account for the wrong he had done. Elizabeth, on the contrary, deemed that the scene was closed, the curtain fallen. What more could arise? Neville had obtained assurance of the innocence and miserable end of his mother. In some manner this would be declared to the world; but the echo of such a voice would not penetrate the solitude in which she and her guardian were hereafter to live. Silence and exclusion were the signal and seal of discovered guilt -- other punishment she did not expect. The name of Falkner had become abhorrent to all who bore any relationship to the injured Alithea. She had bid an eternal adieu to the domestic circle at Oakly -- to the kind and frank-hearted Lady Cecil -- and, with her, to Gerard. His mind, fraught with a thousand virtues -- his heart, whose sensibility had awoke her tenderness, were shut irrevocably against her.

Did she love Gerard? This question never entered her own mind. She felt, but did not reason on, her emotions. Elizabeth was formed to be alive to the better part of love. Her enthusiasm gave ideality, her affectionate disposition warmth, to all her feelings. She loved Falkner, and that with so much truth and delicacy, yet fervour of passion, that scarcely could her virgin heart conceive a power more absolute, a tie more endearing, than the gratitude she had vowed to him; yet she intimately felt the difference that existed between her deep-rooted attachment for him she named and looked on as her father, and the spring of playful, happy, absorbing emotions that animated her intercourse with Neville. To the one she dedicated her life and services; she watched him as a mother may a child; a smile or cheerful tone of voice was warmth and gladness to her anxious bosom, and she wept over his misfortunes with the truest grief.