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Tales & Novels, Vol. IX by Maria Edgeworth
Book, page 301 / 508


long ago--_may you live to wonder at your own good luck!_"

Ormond looked as if he was going to ask some question that interested him
much, but it ended by wondering what o'clock it was. Sheelah wondered at
him for thinking what the hour was, when she was talking of Miss Dora.
After a silence, which brought them to the chicken-yard door, where Sheelah
was "to quit his arm," she leaned heavily again,

"The marriage--that they are all talking of in the kitchen, and every where
through the country--Miss Dora's marriage with White Connal, is reprieved
for the season. She axed time till she'd be seventeen--very rasonable. So
it's to be in October--if we all live till those days--in the same mind.
Lord, he knows--I know nothing at all about it; but I thank you kindly,
Master Harry, and wish you well, any way. Did you ever happen to see the
bridegroom that is to be?"

"Never."

Harry longed to hear what she longed to say; but he did not deem it
prudent, he did not think it honourable, to let her enter on this topic.
The prudential consideration might have been conquered by curiosity; but
the honourable repugnance to obtaining second-hand information, and
encouraging improper confidence, prevailed. He deposited Sheelah safe on
her stone bench at the chicken-yard door, and, much against her will, he
left her before she had told or hinted to him all she did know--and all she
did not know.

The flattering delight that played about our young hero's head had
increased, was increasing, and ought to be diminished. Of this he was
sensible. It should never come near his heart--of that he was determined;
he would exactly follow the letter and spirit of his benefactor's commands
--he would always consider Dora as a married woman; but the prospect of
there being some temptation, and some struggle, was infinitely agreeable to
our young hero--it would give him something to do, something to think of,
something to feel.

It was much in favour of his resolution, that Dora really was not at all
the kind of woman he had pictured to himself, either as amiable or
charming: she was not in the least like his last patterns of heroines, or
any of his approved imaginations of the _beau ideal_. But she was an

 
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