Alfred; or, The Adventures of a French Gentleman — page 217: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

»' 186 ALFRED; OR ADVENTURES He’s worthy, I ween, of such bliss divine, Since I, the victor of Palestine, Forgetting the rank of thee and thine, Were fain to have robbed thy virgin shrine. ‘Thy father will tell thee, I came in the might, Like a robber who shuns the glare of day-light ; I came like a south wind on blossoms bright, Fraught with intention to ravish and blight :— But now, though I’ve conquered thine own true knight, He Though I love thee, sweet maiden, as much as man might, Still justice directs my heart aright, And to-morrow thy bridal shall speed in our sight.” ‘¢ Delightful!” cried Mr. Clayton, rising from his chair to im- print a kiss on the chaste brow of Eloise, whom he loved with all the tenderness usually manifested by a father towardsa child. The ainiable girl expressed the gratification she experienced in having pleased her uncle; and the day passed away more happily than any other since the fatal moment when Alfred was first accused of a dreadful act of turpitude. Mrs. Clayton never demonstrated so much affection, nor showed so many instances of sincere love towards her innocent daughter before: and Eloise was half inclined to throw herself on her mother’s bosom, and confess her permanent attachment to De Rosann, as well as the fact of their secret corres- pondence, when she received the caresses of a parent from whom she now withheld, for the first time in her life, the thoughts and reflections of her secret soul. But she happily called to mind the injunctions of her uncle; and satisfied her conscience with the conviction of acting under his - sanction and auspices. She knew that he would be the last person in the world to mislead her—that his ideas of propriety would not permit him to suffer his niece to violate, in the slightest degree, the strict laws of decorum and female delicacy—and that he merely moderated by his indulgence the harsh decrees of her mother. With these impressions, Eloise calmed her agitated mind, and satisfied all her scruples, determining to follow her uncle’s advice in this matter, and her mother’s in every other—a compromise at which the most punctilious of our readers cannot express the smallest disapprobation, inasmuch as parental solicitude cannot always discriminate clearly in affairs so particularly connected with a child’s present and future happiness. =a CHAPTER AXVE. A DEATH-BED. “Your absence during a whole day is thus explained, M. De Rosann,” said Selina. «¢ And I have now given you a true and faithful account of the affair,” returned our hero. ‘I saw the surgeon, who attends - ECORNIE OOKS Gor