Valisneria; Or a Midsummer Day's Dream - Emily Jane Pfeiffer

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1857 Excerpt: ...one has failed to render me insensible to his cracked voice, and the other to his crooked eyes?" "Unquestionably not!" cried Bobadil in high glee, "vain fops and fools they are all of them. But does it never happen that there turns up one among all your admirers without such disqualifying attributes as you describe? I am afraid, mistress Willy-nilly, that though doubtless very merciful, you may be a trifle too difficult to please. Did you never chance to turn your eyes round, --as you say that young maidens are forbidden to do, --and find that they lighted upon something to your taste? Come now, speak out, never mind confessing to me that you have looked a little high I " and Bobadil chuckled, and settled himself into his fine clothes with a waggish air. "I might certainly make such a confession to you better than to many a one," replied Sundew, "it is so easy to speak freely with one of your years, --but as I want no absolution, being sensible of no wrong, I may as well keep my secrets to myself. What I do not object to telling you, however, is the reason that I may be a little difficult to please. It is, --it is," pursued the arch coquette, flashing upon him a fiery glance, "that I feel within myself that I could love! not as the passive creatures who accept with resignation the first hand that is held out to them, but as natures like mine, gay, and free, and a little bit wild if you will, do love when they once set their hearts to it! I am proud and wilful, I can see the lake at my feet and spurn it, but the hero of my heart would be my God and his love my heaven! I could exist and feel well all my days, in a heat which to another would be death; what would be fever in the dull existences about me, would be b...