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A BOARDING - SCHOOL ROMANCE .
evil behavior,” tossed her little golden head, and laughed at him!
He was quite beside himself with anger and jealousy, and resolved to establish a claim as soon as possible to have and to hold this wayward young maiden.
Perhaps, as Miss Lingle sat in the shadow of her red damask curtains, the next afternoon, and listened to the boyish eloquence poured into her ears on behalf of her little niece, her thoughts may have drifted back through the years to some sunny day in the past, when lover’s words were uttered not for another, but for herself. Perhaps this gave a tremor to her voice as she answered the boy kindly, bidding him say nothing of the kind to Pansy, who was quite too young yet to listen to love-making— but to wait patiently for a year or two; and then, if Pansy were willing, and his parents gave their consent, why they might think of it.
Miss Lingle knew that, in a worldly point of view, this would be a most desirable match for her little girl, and this very consciousness made her all the more cautious. Perhaps she felt an excess of delicacy on the subject; but she was resolved that neither parents nor neighbors should be able to say that she had tried to secure the heir of the Willmores for Pansy.
Clifford fumed and fretted over fancied slights from Pansy, and plagued Miss Lingle and himself whenever he had a chance; and finally, he took a severe cold by plunging into the river to rescue a small boy of depraved instincts, whose drowning would have been a blessing to his family, and the world at large. Violent fever soon set in; the great house was still and darkened; and the bright, boy-face was seen no more in his accustomed haunts.
Miss Lingle was kind and neighborly, and much troubled about her favorite; while Pansy, in a shy way, felt dreadfully for Clifford. It seemed so unnatural that he should be sick and helpless; but in a startingly short time word came to Miss Lingle that Mr. Willmore’s heir was dying, and she was requested to bring her niece at once to the house.
The poor child was white with terror, as they entered the sick-room; and there sat Clifford, propped up in bed, looking so wan and ghastly, and his great eyes seeking hers with such a hungry look. The fever had subsided; but the physicians said he was dying, and the only thing now was to give him all he wanted, and let him die in peace.
What the young gentleman pleased to want, at this unseasonable hour, was nothing less than the hand of Miss Pansy Berks. He had raved about it in his delirium; he could die happily, he said, if Pansy were only his wife for a few minutes; and his obedient parents, who would have made an attempt to get him the moon, if he had asked for it, immediately took measures to gratify this more reasonable desire.
Miss Lingle was astonished beyond measure at Mr. Willmore’s ‘urgent request that the marriage-ceremony should immediately be performed between the children.
‘It can do no harm,” said he, without giving her time to remonstrate; ‘a clergyman will come from town on the shortest notice, and the knowledge that any such ceremony has taken place can be strictly confined to those immediately engaged in it. It need never be known that the young lady is a widow; but I shall provide for her as I would for my own daughter; and the boy has so short a time to live, that it would be cruel to refuse him.”
Mrs. Willmore added her tears and entreaties; Pansy was too frightened and sorrow-stricken to offer any objection; and before evening, the boy and girl were pronounced “man and wife.”
When Pansy, in obedience to that faint voice, pressed a good-night kiss on Clifford’s brow, she never expected to see him again; and tormented with the recollection of various little girlish naughtinesses, in which she had lately indulged, she spent most of the night in crying and bewailing her sins.
But Clifford was alive the next morning, and the next, and the next after that; his hurried nuptials seemed to have had a favorable effect upon him; and, much to every one’s astonishment, he was soon pronounced out of danger.
Poor Miss Lingle! her feelings were quite indescribable in this perplexing dilemma; and when she fairly realized that the ungrateful youth was evidently determined to live, after all the trouble that had been taken to insure him a comfortable departure, she pounced upon Pansy in a state of distraction, and consigned her at once to boarding-school as the nearest approach to a Protestant convent.
Dreadful! she thought, to contemplate two infants, aged respectively sixteen and eighteen, actually presuming to call themselves married! (as they undoubtedly were) and dreadful to think of anything like coldness from Mr. and Mrs. Willmere, who, perhaps, would never have countenanced their son’s fancy, except in expectation of his speedy death.
So, Pansy, very much bewildered at the turn affairs had taken, was hurried off with great privacy to Southbrook Seminary; and with a
