The novels of Charles Brockden Brown, consisting of Wieland;or, The transformation. Arthur Mervyn; or, Memoirs of the year 1793. Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a sleep-walker. Jane Talbot. Ormond; or, The secret witness. Clara Howard; or, The enthusiasm of love. With a memoir of the author.

THE ENTHUSIASM OF LOVE.

13

yours the more difficult, while it increased the necessity
and enforced the justice of that sacrifice. I could not discover the probability that marriage would give birth to
that love which previous tenderness and kindness had been
unable to produce. I doubted not your fidelity, and that
the consciousness of conferring happiness would secure
your contentment; but I felt that this was insufficient for
my pride, if not for my love.
I sought your happiness. To be the author of it was
the object of inexpressible longings. To be happy without you was impossible; but the misery of loneliness,
however great, was less than that of being the spectator
of your misery, or even that of defrauding you of the
felicity attending marriage with a woman whom you could
truly love. Meanwhile, our mutual poverty was itself
an insurmountable bar to marriage.
My brother's death put me in seeming possession of
competence. Circumstances were now somewhat changed.
If no claimant appeared, I should be able, by giving myself to you, to bestow upon the object of my love that
good the want of which nothing can compensate. There
were no other means of rescuing your sisters and yourself from indigence and dependence. What I was willing
to share with you, you would not share with me on any
terms but those of wedlock.
Too well did I see on what weak foundations was built
this scheme of happiness. This property was never
gained by my brother's own industry; and how could I
apply to my own use what I could not doubt belonged to
another, though that other should never appear to claim
it at my hands?
My reluctance was partly subdued by your urgency.
I consented waveringly, and with a thousand misgivings,
to be yours at the end of six months, if no one should
appear, meantime, to make out a good title to this money.
I listened to your arguments and suppositions, by which
you would fain account for my brother's acquisition of
so large a sum consistently with honesty, and for his
silence as to his possession of it. I was willing to be
convinced, and consented to sacrifice my peace by
marrying the man I loved, because this marriage would