CHAP. V.

THE SUBJECT CONTINUED.

"I pray, Sir, tell me—is it possible

"That love should of a sudden take such hold?"

SHAKSPEARE.

RETURNED to his inn, it was late before Tremaine could seek his bed, and then not to sleep.

"She is by far the most interesting young creature," said he to himself," I ever met with. If nature ever yet spoke in person, she is here."

He turned, and turned again in his bed, and attempted to close his eyes; but Eugenia was ever before them. Who she was, and what she was, were questions he did not fail to ask himself. But it mattered not, he said; it was evident that both mother and daughter were, in mind and manners, far removed from vulgar life, if they might not belong to his own sphere. He went on to hazard a hundred conjectures of another nature. Eugenia seemed all sensibility; had she ever loved, or was her heart virgin? It seemed made for love! But could she love him?

It must be owned, he had gone very far indeed when he reached this topic. Not that it was very distinct even to his own mind. It however floated .there, with a thousand other vague thoughts; the only thing certain to his consciousness being, that he had met with a person, who, to the most lovely beauty he had ever seen, appeared to join all that simplicity and truth of nature which his heart had so long and so fondly coveted.

Eugenia, on her part, was scarcely less restless. She loitered long with her mother, to talk of their extraordinary adventure. "Was there ever any thing so elegant, so noble, as their guest! such propriety, yet such softness! so perfect a gentleman! so fraught with good taste, and every virtue!"

"That last is going very far," said her mother; 66 we must see much more of him before we can judge of that."

"What

"Oh! I'm sure of it," said Eugenia. happiness to be his friend! and to be called his friend! How kind to a mere cottage girl! Oh, mother, if he stays here, I shall love him too well— I already prefer him to all the world !"

The next morning brought Tremaine to their gate. His young friend was there already. "I have been looking for you all the morning," said she, "and am so glad."

Tremaine again felt a little amazed; but perceiv

ing, as she said this, a glowing cheek, a sparkling eye, and a form evidently agitated with pleasure, he could only give credence to this flattering appearance, and bless his good fortune for having thrown in his way such a study for his heart, in its present pursuit.

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It is needless to pursue the detail of this part of the parrative. It is sufficient that the day afforded the same delight to all the party, as the preceding evening had done; and that Tremaine passed it, and the day after that, and the next, and the next, with his new friends, in a manner to confirm all his notions of Eugenia's sensibility, as well as his conviction that he alone was the absorbing object of that sensibility. He gathered, however (contrary to the course of romance), that there was nothing very remarkable, either in Eugenia's situation or history. Mrs. Belson was in fact the widow of a gentleman of merit, but in middle life. She had made herself what she was by the force of her own talent and observation, and had retired to this province, in order the better to conduct the education of her children.

To do Mr. Tremaine justice, this weighed either nothing, or very little with him. He had all his life long sought for a virgin heart, and an unsophisticated mind, which he might be able to attach to his own, for his own sake, without any view to his

rank and situation. Without such demonstration he thought he never could count, either upon the actual existence of the feelings themselves of which he was in search, or the fidelity of the heart which might seem to possess them. To be sure he would have wished to have found his object in the midst of elegance and splendour; but, exclusive of his having sought it there in vain, his being every where known to possess many thousands a year, prevented all possibility of making an experiment on the reality and extent of the affection he wished to prove. He, therefore, as we have before hinted, had for some time past turned from the rich and great, without much immediate plan as to any others, when chance threw this daughter of nature and retirement in his way; and if Eugenia's mind answered his as a companion, all the rest, he imagined, was completely out of doubt. He therefore willingly gave some days to the farther contemplation of this great object; and his pleasure was complete on finding that, while her heart seemed framed to carry love to its most romantic excess, her mind was of so plastic a nature that he might mould it to what he pleased. An amiable yielding to the opinion and wishes of those she loved, was evidently its characteristic. But as yet he had made no actual experiment on her affections; and, indeed, such was the glow of her friendship, as Eugenia called it,

(and took no pains to conceal it, either from him, her mother, or herself), that no other man would perhaps have thought of making any.

He had represented himself to Mrs. Belson merely as a man of good connexions; and so far he was relieved from the fear that his fortune stood in the way of a free decision, should his own heart prompt him to go on. But he wished still more; and in his romance, his eccentricity, or his refinement-call it what we please he conceived the strange design of experimenting upon the strength of his young friend's attachment to him, removed from all extraneous influence, even of hope.

Nothing was ever perhaps more difficult, or more unfair; yet he both resolved and contrived to execute it. To inquire into the justice of the attempt never struck him as necessary.

It was in the third week of their acquaintance, that, in hinting more of his history to Mrs. Belson, he gave her to understand that the whole soul of an uncle, on whom was his sole dependance for any thing like fortune, was fixed upon his forming a high matrimonial connexion: he was, therefore, any thing but his own master, as to the disposal of his hand; and though nothing had yet passed in form between himself and the lady, yet his uncle had insisted upon carte blanche being left with him on the subject, before he allowed him to proceed on his travels.