The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe — Read

Ah happy hills! ah pleasing shade! / Ah fields belov'd in vain! / Where once my careless childhood stray'd, / A stranger yet to pain! / I feel the gales, that from ye blow, / A momentary bliss bestow, / As waving fresh their gladsome wing, / My weary soul they seem to sooth. / - Gray

On the following morning, Emily left Toulouse at an early hour, and reached La Vallée about sunset. With the melancholy she experienced on the review of a place which had been the residence of her parents, and the scene of her earliest delight, was mingled, after the first shock had subsided, a tender and undescribable pleasure. For time had so far blunted the acuteness of her grief, that she now courted every scene, that awakened the memory of her friends; in every room, where she had been accustomed to see them, they almost seemed to live again; and she felt that La Vallée was still her happiest home. One of the first apartments she visited, was that, which had been her father's library, and here she seated herself in his armchair, and, while she contemplated, with tempered resignation, the picture of past times, which her memory gave, the tears she shed could scarcely be called those of grief.