Strathern Volume 2; A Novel

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: lacerated heart. When relieved by tears, Louisa again expressed her desire to see Strathern once more. It may be a weakness, dearmother, butl pray you to bear with me, when I urge this wish of mine against your opinion. I want to judge for myself how he will look and act when we meet, and whether it will be possible for him to assume his usual tenderness of manner and fond devotion after what we have seen. If he can, why then I think I may bring myself, as I ought, to rejoice in my deliverance from such a husband. But alas! the changeful colour and trembling lips the agitated girl but too well betrayed that, whatever might be the result of the purposed interview, the time was yet far, far distant when, however her reason might approve it, her rupture with her lover could become' a source of satisfaction to her. Even firmer minds than Louisa Sydney's might be pardoned for the feverish anxiety that now filled hers in the trying position in which she found herself placed. Strathern had been so truly loved, had filled her heart and her thoughts so wholly during the last few months, had so entirely occupied the present and mingled with every plan, every hope of the future, that she could not tear his image from her breast without almost breaking the heart with whose very fibres it was entwined. To think of him of whom she had made an idol, now degraded and worthless, was torture, was agony. The present was insupportable, and the future she dared not contemplate. Forgetful of the precepts of religion, that only true consolation in all earthly trials, she prayed for death, thoughtless of how unfit she was, with a heart filled with love for man, to meet the presence of her divine Creator. Mrs. Sydney, unwilling to give pain by opposing, at length yielded to the wish of her daughte...