There was a gentleman of small fortune who lived near his family mansion who had three lovely daughters.  The eldest was far the most beautiful, but her beauty was only an addition to her other qualities—­her understanding was clear & strong and her disposition angelically gentle.  She and my father had been playmates from infancy:  Diana, even in her childhood had been a favourite with his mother; this partiality encreased with the years of this beautiful and lively girl and thus during his school & college vacations[8] they were perpetually together.  Novels and all the various methods by which youth in civilized life are led to a knowledge of the existence of passions before they really feel them, had produced a strong effect on him who was so peculiarly susceptible of every impression.  At eleven years of age Diana was his favourite playmate but he already talked the language of love.  Although she was elder than he by nearly two years the nature of her education made her more childish at least in the knowledge and expression of feeling; she received his warm protestations with innocence, and returned them unknowing of what they meant.  She had read no novels and associated only with her younger sisters, what could she know of the difference between love and friendship?  And when the development of her understanding disclosed the true nature of this intercourse to her, her affections were already engaged to her friend, and all she feared was lest other attractions and fickleness might make him break his infant vows.

But they became every day more ardent and tender.  It was a passion that had grown with his growth; it had become entwined with every faculty and every sentiment and only to be lost with life.  None knew of their love except their own two hearts; yet although in all things else, and even in this he dreaded the censure of his companions, for thus truly loving one inferior to him in fortune, nothing was ever able for a moment to shake his purpose of uniting himself to her as soon as he could muster courage sufficient to meet those difficulties he was determined to surmount.

Diana was fully worthy of his deepest affection.  There were few who could boast of so pure a heart, and so much real humbleness of soul joined to a firm reliance on her own integrity and a belief in that of others.  She had from her birth lived a retired life.  She had lost her mother when very young, but her father had devoted himself to the care of her education—­He had many peculiar ideas which influenced the system he had adopted with regard to her—­She was well acquainted with the heroes of Greece and Rome or with those of England who had lived some hundred years ago, while she was nearly ignorant of the passing events of the day:  she had read few authors who had written during at least the last fifty years but her reading with this exception was very extensive.  Thus although she appeared to be less initiated in the mysteries of life and society than he her knowledge was of a deeper kind and laid on firmer foundations; and if even her beauty and sweetness had not fascinated him her understanding would ever have held his in thrall.  He looked up to her as his guide, and such was his adoration that he delighted to augment to his own mind the sense of inferiority with which she sometimes impressed him.[9]