Rosine Laval

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1833 edition. Excerpt: ...of full ten minutes, for he made long pauses which we have not marked; and he was now resolved to profit by the very first opportunity to declare his unconquerable love; and he fell to studying the speech proper for the occasion. In the mean time, Caroline has found Rosine in her chamber, whither she had returned with pangs a thousand times B 3 more more acute than those she had before experienced. The fatal truth was now revealed to her; she loved, and with a hopeless passion. She reproached herself, after her calmness had in some degree been restored, for her folly and weakness; she accused herself of being little short of mad, nay, quite mad to think of falling in love with her cousin, and becoming the rival of Caroline, after having done her best to bring about a union between them. But after all her bitter self-reproaches were exhausted, after she had thought, also, of the indignant answer she had years before heard her aunts Rose and Leonora both make to a jest of uncle Hugh, upon the possibility of Hugh's making her his wife, she was ready to condemn herself to the severest punishment, for having so far forgotten what was due to herself and to the generous benefactresses for whom she ever cherished the truest and the warmest gratitude. But the moment her self-reproaches were over, the same desolate feeling pervaded her heart. She felt that the charm of her existence, the sweet illusion which she had for years unconsciously cherished, that the dearest friend of her childhood would never love any but her, had vanished, and in the place of it came a black despair. The world had nothing to offer her. He whom she had so long regarded as her other self, whom she had garnered up in her heart, was lost to her at the very instant that she...