"
What a subject of meditation--even to the very
confines of madness.
"Woman, fragile flower! why were you suffered to adorn a world
exposed to the inroad of such stormy elements?" thought Maria,
while the poor maniac's strain was still breathing on her ear,
and sinking into her very soul.
Towards the evening, Jemima brought her Rousseau's Heloise;
and she sat reading with eyes and heart, till the return of her
guard to extinguish the light. One instance of her kindness was,
the permitting Maria to have one, till her own hour of retiring to
rest. She had read this work long since; but now it seemed to open
a new world to her--the only one worth inhabiting. Sleep was not
to be wooed; yet, far from being fatigued by the restless rotation
of thought, she rose and opened her window, just as the thin watery
clouds of twilight made the long silent shadows visible. The air
swept across her face with a voluptuous freshness that thrilled to
her heart, awakening indefinable emotions; and the sound of a waving
branch, or the twittering of a startled bird, alone broke the
stillness of reposing nature.
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