Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 2.djvu/158

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148
THE TENANT

CHAPTER IX.


PARENTAL FEELINGS.


December 25th.—Last Christmas I was a bride, with a heart overflowing with present bliss, and full of ardent hopes for the future—though not unmingled with foreboding fears. Now I am a wife: my bliss is sobered, but not destroyed; my hopes diminished, but not departed; my fears increased but not yet thoroughly confirmed;—and, thank Heaven, I am a mother too. God has sent me a soul to educate for heaven, and give me a new and calmer bliss, and stronger hopes to comfort me. But where hope