Imagination and Heart, Tales for Fifteen | Page 5

sacred with me, and nothing, no,
nothing, could ever tempt me to violate such a trust. Charles is very
kind and very indulgent to all my whims, but he never could obtain
such an influence over me as to become the depositary of my secrets.
Nothing but a friend, like yourself, can do that, my dear Anna."
"Never! Miss Warren," said the youth with a lip that betrayed by its
tremulous motion the interest he took in her speech--"never includes a
long period of time. But," he added with a smile of good- humoured
pleasantry, "if admitted to such a distinction, I should not feel myself
competent to the task of commenting on so much innocence and purity,
as I know I should find in your correspondence."
"Yes," said Anna, with a little of the energy of her friend's manner,
"you may with truth say so, Mr. Weston. The imagination of my Julia is
as pure as-- as-----" but turning her eyes from the countenance of Julia
to that of the youth, rather suddenly, the animated pleasure she saw
delineated in his expressive, though plain features, drove the remainder
of the speech from her recollection.

"As her heart!" cried Charles Weston with emphasis.
"As her heart, Sir," repeated the young lady coldly.
The last adieus were hastily exchanged, and Anna Miller was handed
into her father's gig by Charles Weston in profound silence. Miss
Emmerson, the maiden aunt of Julia, withdrew from the door, where
she had been conversing with Mr. Miller, and the travellers departed.
Julia followed the vehicle with her eyes until it was hid by the trees and
shrubbery that covered the lawn, and then withdrew to her room to give
vent to a sorrow that had sensibly touched her affectionate heart, and in
no trifling degree haunted her lively imagination.
As Miss Emmerson by no means held the good qualities of the guest,
who had just left them, in so high an estimation as did her niece, she
proceeded quietly and with great composure in the exercise of her daily
duties; not in the least suspecting the real distress that, from a variety of
causes, this sudden separation had caused to her ward.
The only sister of this good lady had died in giving birth to a female
infant, and the fever of 1805 had, within a very few years of the death
of the mother, deprived the youthful orphan of her remaining parent.
Her father was a merchant, just commencing the foundations of what
would, in time, have been a large estate; and as both Miss Emmerson
and her sister were possessed of genteel independencies, and the aunt
had long declared her intention of remaining single, the fortune of Julia,
if not brilliant, was thought rather large than otherwise. Miss
Emmerson had been educated immediately after the war of the
revolution, and at a time when the intellect of the women of this
country by no means received that attention it is thought necessary to
bestow on the minds of the future mothers of our families at the present
hour; and when, indeed, the country itself required too much of the care
of her rulers and patriots to admit of the consideration of lesser objects.
With the best of hearts and affections devoted to the welfare of her
niece, Miss Emmerson had early discovered her own incompetency to
the labour of fitting Julia for the world in which she was to live, and
shrunk with timid modesty from the arduous task of preparing herself,
by application and study, for this sacred duty. The fashions of the day
were rapidly running into the attainment of accomplishments among
the young of her own sex, and the piano forte was already sending forth
its sonorous harmony from one end of the Union to the other, while the

glittering usefulness of the tambour-frame was discarded for the pallet
and brush. The walls of our mansions were beginning to groan with the
sickly green of imaginary fields, that caricatured the beauties of nature;
and skies of sunny brightness, that mocked the golden hues of even an
American sun. The experience of Miss Emmerson went no further than
the simple evolutions of the country dance, or the deliberate and
dignified procession of the minuet. No wonder, therefore, that her
faculties were bewildered by the complex movements of the cotillion:
and, in short, as the good lady daily contemplated the improvements of
the female youth around her, she became each hour more convinced of
her own inability to control, or in any manner to superintend, the
education of her orphan niece. Julia was, consequently, entrusted to the
government of a select boarding-school; and, as even the morals of the
day were, in some degree, tinctured with the existing fashions, her
mind as well as