At short and distant intervals such melancholy reveries gave place to
the pitying image of Mary Beaufort. It sometimes visited him in the
day--it always was his companion during the night. He courted her
lovely ideal as a spell that for a while stole him from painful
reflections. With an entranced soul he recalled every lineament of
her angel--like face, every tender sympathy of that gentle voice
which had hurried him into the rashness of touching her hand. One
moment he pressed her gold chain closer to his heart, almost
believing what Lady Tinemouth had insinuated; the next, he would sigh
over his credulity, and return with despondent though equally intense
love to the contemplation of her virtues, independent of himself.
The more he meditated on the purity of her manners, the elevated
principles to which he could trace her actions, and, above all, on
the benevolent confidence with which she had ever treated him (a man
contemned by one part of her acquaintance, and merely received on
trust by the remainder), the more he found reasons to regard that
character with his grateful admiration. When he drew a comparison
between Miss Beaufort and most women of the same quality whom he had
seen in England and in other countries, he contemplated with
delighted wonder that spotless mind which, having passed through the
various ordeals annexed to wealth and fashion, still bore itself
uncontaminated.
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