Still he hoped.
"If love creates love, as some say it does," thought he, "Amelie de
Repentigny cannot be indifferent to a passion which governs every
impulse of my being! But is there any especial merit in loving her
whom all the world cannot help admiring equally with myself? I am
presumptuous to think so!--and more presumptuous still to expect,
after so many years of separation and forgetfulness, that her heart,
so loving and so sympathetic, has not already bestowed its affection
upon some one more fortunate than me."
While Pierre tormented himself with these sharp thorns of doubt,--
and of hopes painful as doubts,--little did he think what a brave,
loving spirit was hid under the silken vesture of Amelie de
Repentigny, and how hard was her struggle to conceal from his eyes
those tender regards, which, with over-delicacy, she accounted
censurable because they were wholly spontaneous.
He little thought how entirely his image had filled her heart during
those years when she dreamed of him in the quiet cloister, living in
a world of bright imaginings of her own; how she had prayed for his
safety and welfare as she would have prayed for the soul of one
dead,--never thinking, or even hoping, to see him again.
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