Zenobia, I
suspect, would have given her eyes, bright as they were, for such a
look; it was the least that our poor Priscilla could do, to give her
heart for a great many of them. There was the more danger of this,
inasmuch as the footing on which we all associated at Blithedale was
widely different from that of conventional society. While inclining
us to the soft affections of the golden age, it seemed to authorize
any individual, of either sex, to fall in love with any other,
regardless of what would elsewhere be judged suitable and prudent.
Accordingly the tender passion was very rife among us, in various
degrees of mildness or virulence, but mostly passing away with the
state of things that had given it origin. This was all well enough;
but, for a girl like Priscilla and a woman like Zenobia to jostle one
another in their love of a man like Hollingsworth, was likely to be
no child's play.
Had I been as cold-hearted as I sometimes thought myself, nothing
would have interested me more than to witness the play of passions
that must thus have been evolved. But, in honest truth, I would
really have gone far to save Priscilla, at least, from the
catastrophe in which such a drama would be apt to terminate.
Priscilla had now grown to be a very pretty girl, and still kept
budding and blossoming, and daily putting on some new charm, which
you no sooner became sensible of than you thought it worth all that
she had previously possessed. So unformed, vague, and without
substance, as she had come to us, it seemed as if we could see Nature
shaping out a woman before our very eyes, and yet had only a more
reverential sense of the mystery of a woman's soul and frame.
Pages:
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98