Seite:Marsh Hallig 1856.djvu/68

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who could blame the lover for reading a responsive
"thine," in that pressure of the hand and the look
which accompanied it. She now called her father, and
asked him to partake of the refreshment which Alicant
had presented to the beach of a hallig.
  Let us not be surprised that Idalia, who had ob-
served the impression made upon Godber by her charms
while they were still on board the ship, should have
hastened to gain a complete triumph on his heart by a
response so ready as to seem scarce maidenly. It was
not in her character to find any pleasure in the fears
and uncertainties of love. She wished to see her de-
sires speedily accomplished without the tormenting sus-
pense between fear and hope. The probable shortness
of her stay on the hallig urged her still more to this
course, since she could not help fearing that a few days
at most, would separate her from Godber, whom she
loved as sincerely as her selfish nature was capable of
loving. Early novel-reading, too, had long since de-
stroyed that timid delicacy which is a part of woman's
nature, and which, like the soft fragrant enamel on
flowers, that subdues and yet beautifies their colors,
adds more to her charms than any acquired grace, but
an assumption of which is the most disagreeable of all
affectations.
  This fair inheritance, this never-to-be-reoovered fra-
grance of maidenly modesty, is lost to your daughters,
ye careless parents, who permit them to read any thing,
almost without exception, which belles-lettres literature
offers. With your rules of propriety, with your pru-
dential maxims, with your notions of honor, you can
never recreate that incense of unconscious innocence