When he asked her for my hand, she was no longer able to
command her passions--she raked up every injury which the rival
families had inflicted upon each other during a bloody feud of two
centuries--heaped him with epithets of scorn, and rejected his
proposal of alliance, as if it had come from the basest of mankind.
"My lover retired in passion; and I remained to weep and murmur
against fortune, and--I will confess my fault--against my affectionate
parent. I had been educated with different feelings, and the
traditions of the feuds and quarrels of my mother's family in
Scotland, which we're to her monuments and chronicles, seemed to me as
insignificant and unmeaning as the actions and fantasies of Don
Quixote; and I blamed my mother bitterly for sacrificing my happiness
to an empty dream of family dignity.
"While I was in this humour, my lover sought a renewal of our
intercourse. We met repeatedly in the house of the lady whom I have
mentioned, and who, in levity, or in the spirit of intrigue,
countenanced our secret correspondence. At length we were secretly
married--so far did my blinded passion hurry me. My lover had secured
the assistance of a clergyman of the English church. Monna Paula, who
had been my attendant from infancy, was one witness of our union. Let
me do the faithful creature justice--She conjured me to suspend my
purpose till my mother's death should permit us to celebrate our
marriage openly; but the entreaties of my lover, and my own wayward
passion, prevailed over her remonstrances.
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