all feeling save that of her immediate wretchedness, she
thought only of the horrible scenes through which she
had passed; and even he, whom at another moment she could
have clasped in an agony of fond tenderness to her beating
bosom,--he to whom she had pledged her virgin faith, and
was bound by the dearest of human ties,--he whom she had
so often longed to behold once more, and had thought of,
the preceding day, with all the tenderness of her
impassioned and devoted soul,--even he did not, in the
first hours of her terrible consciousness, so much as
command a single passing regard. All the affections were
for a period blighted in her bosom. She seemed as one
devoted, without the power of resistance, to a grief
which calcined and preyed upon all other feelings of the
mind. One stunning and annihilating reflection seemed to
engross every principle of her being; nor was it for
hours after she had been restored to life and recollection
that a deluge of burning tears, giving relief to her
heart and a new direction to her feelings, enabled her
at length to separate the past from, and in some degree
devote herself to, the present. Then, indeed, for the
first time did she perceive and take pleasure in the
presence of her lover; and clasping her beloved and
weeping Clara to her heart, thank her God, in all the
fervour of true piety, that she at least had been spared
to shed a ray of comfort on her distracted spirit. But
we will not pain the reader by dwelling on a scene that
drew tears even from the rugged and flint-nerved boatswain
himself; for, although we should linger on it with minute
anatomical detail, no powers of language we possess could