Falkner by Mary Shelley

Elizabeth rose on the following morning, her bosom glowing with a sensation of acknowledged happiness. So much of young love brooded in her heart, as quickened its pulsations, as gave lightness and joy to her thoughts. She had no doubts, nor fears, nor even hopes: she was not aware that love was the real cause of the grateful sense of happiness, with which she avowed, to Heaven and herself, that all was peace. She was glad to be reunited to Falkner, for whom she felt an attachment at once so respectful, and yet, on account of his illness and melancholy, so watchful and tender, as never allowed her to be wholly free from solicitude when absent from him. Also she expected on that morning to see Gerard Neville. When Falkner's letter came to hasten her departure from Oakly, she felt grieved at the recall, at the moment when she was expecting him to join her, so to fill up the measure of her enjoyments; with all this, she was eager to obey, and anxious to be with him again. Lady Cecil deputed Miss Jervis to accompany her. On the very morning of their departure, Neville asked for a seat in the carriage; they travelled to town together; and when they separated, Neville told her of his intention of immediately securing a passage to America, and since then had written a note to mention that he should ride over to Wimbledon on that morning.

The deep interest that Elizabeth took in his enterprise made her solicitous to know whether he had procured any further information; but her paramount desire was to introduce him to Falkner, to inspire him with her sentiments of friendship, and to see two persons whom she considered superior to the rest of the world bound to each other by a mutual attachment; she wanted to impart to her father a pity for Alithea's wrongs, and an admiration for her devoted son. She walked in the shrubbery before breakfast, enjoying nature with the enthusiasm of love; she gathered the last roses of the departing season, and mingling them with a few carnations, hung, with a new sense of rapture, over these fairest children of nature; for it is the property of love to enhance all our enjoyments, "to paint the lily, and add a perfume to the rose. " When she returned to the house, she was told that Falkner still slept, and begged not to be disturbed. She breakfasted, therefore, by herself, sitting by the open casement, and looking on the waving trees, her flowers shedding a sweet atmosphere around; sometimes turning to her open book, where she read of