Among these, on one May-day, was a young
officer whose regiment had been recently quartered in the
neighborhood. He was charmed with the native taste that pervaded
this village pageant, but, above all, with the dawning loveliness
of the queen of May. It was the village favorite who was crowned
with flowers, and blushing and smiling in all the beautiful
confusion of girlish diffidence and delight. The artlessness of
rural habits enabled him readily to make her acquaintance; be
gradually won his way into her intimacy, and paid his court to
her in that unthinking way in which young officers are too apt to
trifle with rustic simplicity.
There was nothing in his advances to startle or alarm. He never
even talked of love, but there are modes of making it more
eloquent than language, and which convey it subtilely and
irresistibly to the heart. The beam of the eye, the tone of
voice, the thousand tendernesses which emanate from every word
and look and action,--these form the true eloquence of love, and
can always be felt and understood, but never described. Can we
wonder that they should readily win a heart young, guileless, and
susceptible? As to her, she loved almost unconsciously; she
scarcely inquired what was the growing passion that was absorbing
every thought and feeling, or what were to be its consequences.
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