The Balance of Comfort, Or, the Old Maid and Married Woman (Volume 1); A Novel (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. T'ei.haps the best way to limit the indiscreet attachments of young people would be to allow them as unrestrained an intercourse with each other as may consist with the respect due to the lady, in places where no co.operating agitation of the feelings should induce that hasty decision from which there is no future appeal. Were this the case, half the eternal passions of nineteen would evaporate before the parties reached the age of one-and-twen- ty, whils those who had been once so mistaken would learn to distrust their own judgment. Sophia Lee. The absence of her daughters left Mrs. Vernon full liberty and leisure to reflect, which the previous bustle of the last few weeks had continually interrupted. It was indeed too late to reflect to any efficient purpose, since the union which drew forth these meditations had irrevocably taken place; but still they would intrude, and with them a fearful idea that she, hadbeen too yielding in allowing of so precipitate a marriage as that of Isabella. She had found it impossible to resist the importunate entreaties of Philipson, or the wishes, better imagined than expressed, of both her daughters; and as she listened to their animated pictures of the future, and Isabella's infended appropriation of her small but sufficient income, she fancied. then that she was not blamable in giving her sanction to an immediate union. The sisters seemed to depend entirely on Ar- lingham's future patronage; and Philipson himself, though he had been disappointed in the manners of his rich brother.in-law, which, quiet and cool to all, had been invariably cold and distant to himself, yet believed he would not refuse to assist the family of his wife, if it should hereafter be required. But though all thesehopes had appeared to Mrs. yernon, throu...