Paolina
herself could not probably have told this to her own heart. But that
such had come to be the case long before the evening when the
Marchese Lamberto sought his nephew at the Circolo, and could not
find him, can hardly be doubted.
Thus much having been admitted, it seems as if there might be reason
to fear that Paolina may appear worthy of censure to those of her
own sex, to whom her story is here commended, to a degree which
truth, and an acquaintance with times, places, and national manners,
would not quite justify. But in these matters of national
appreciation, of fitness and unfitness, and of propriety and
impropriety, the nuances are so fine and subtle, that it is somewhat
difficult, in trying to explain them, to say just what one means
without seeming to say more than one means.
One thing is clear. Paolina was as thoroughly and essentially modest
and innocent a girl as ever breathed; but she was so "by the grace
of God,"--from natural idiosyncrasy and instinctive purity of heart,
that is to say, rather than from teaching of any kind, or from any
knowledge of good or evil. She was an orphan, the child of parents
who were "nobody," and she was left in the world to find her own way
in it as she could. So much the more, replies the prudent English
matron, ought she to have been extra careful lest the breath of
misconception should even for a passing moment sully her.
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