All this was calculated to satisfy me. But this was not all. If

gentleness, sweetness, cheerfulness, and a sleepless consideration

of one's wants and feelings, could convince any mortal of the love

of another--I must have been satisfied. We resumed most of the

habits which began with our marriage, but which had been so long

discontinued. We rose with the sun, and went abroad after his

example. Like him we rose to the hill-tops, and then descended into

the valleys. We grew familiar with the deepest shades of wood and

forest while the dewdrops were yet beading the bosoms of the wild

flowers; and we followed the meandering course of the Alabama,

long before the smoking steamer vexed it with her flashing paddles.

My professional toils from breakfast to dinner-time--for this

interval I studiously gave to my office, even if I had little to do

there--occasioned the only interregnum which I knew in the positive

pleasures which I enjoyed. In the afternoon our enjoyments were

renewed. Our cottage was so sweetly secluded, that we did not need

to go far in order to find the Elysian grove which we desired.

At the top of our hill we were surrounded by a natural temple of

proud pines--guarding the spot from any but that sort of devine

and religious light which streams through the painted windows of

the ancient cathedral. The gay glances of the sun came gliding

through the foliage in drops, and lay upon the grass in little pale,

fanciful gleams, most like eyes of fairies peeping upward from its

velvety tufts. Here we read together from the poets--sometimes

Julia sung, even while sketching. Not unfrequently, Mrs. Porterfield

came with us, and, at such times, our business was to detect distant

glimpses of barge, or steamboat, as they successively darted into

sight, along such of the glittering patches of the Alabama as were

revealed to us in its downward progress through the woods.

Our evenings were such as hallow and make the luxury of cottage

life--evenings yielded up to cheerfulness, to content and harmony.

Between music, and poetry, and painting, my heart was subdued to

the sweetest refinements of love. Without the immorality, we had

the very atmosphere of a Sybarite indulgence. I was enfeebled by the

excess of sweets; and the happiness which I felt expressed itself

in signs. These denoted my presentiments. My apprehensions were

my sole cause of doubt and sorrow. How could such enjoyments last?

Was it possible, with any, that they should last? Was it possible

that they should last with me? I should have been mad to think it.

But, in the sweet delirium which their possession inspired, I

almost forgot the past. The soul of man is the most elastic thing

in nature. Those harassing tortures of the heart which I had been

suffering for months--those weary days of exhausting doubt--those

long nights of torturing suspicion--the shame and the fear, the

sting of jealousy, and the suffering--I had almost forgotten in the

absorbing pleasures of my new existence. If I remembered them it

was only to smile; if I thought of William Edgerton it was only

to pity;--and, as for Julia, deep was the crimson shadow upon my

cheek, whenever the reproachful memory reminded me of the tortures

which I had inflicted upon her gentle heart while laboring under

the tortures of my own--when I thought of the unmanly espionage which

I had maintained over conduct which I now felt to be irreproachable.




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