Strange must be that heart which can behold a being such as Emmeline cling to it, as if its protection and its love were now all that bound her to earth, and still remain unmoved and cold.

Affection is ever strengthened by dependence--dependence at least like this; and there was something peculiarly touching in Emmeline's present state of mental weakness.

Her parents felt, as they gazed on her, that they had occasioned the anguish which had prostrated her on a bed of sickness; and yet their child clung to them as if, in the intensity of her affection for them, and theirs for her, she would strive to forget her unhappy love, and be once more happy.
Time rolled heavily by, and some few weeks passed, ere Emmeline was sufficiently convalescent to leave her room, and then her pallid features and attenuated form were such constant and evident proofs of that mental as well as bodily fever, that Mrs.Hamilton could not look on her without pain.

She was still inwardly restless and uneasy, though evidently struggling for cheerfulness, and Mr.Maitland, to whom some necessary particulars of her tale had been told, gave as his opinion, that some secret anxiety still rested on her mind, which would be much better removed; the real cause of that solicitude her parents very easily penetrated.

Mr.Hamilton, fearing the effects of excitement in her still very delicate state, had refrained from telling her all he had accomplished in young Myrvin's favour during her sickness, but on hearing Mr.Maitland's report, her parents both felt assured it was for that information she pined, and therefore determined on instantly giving her relief.
It was with the utmost tenderness and caution Mr.Hamilton alluded to the subject, and seating himself by her couch, playfully asked her if she would promise him to get well the sooner, if he gratified her by the pleasing intelligence that Arthur Myrvin's character was cleared, that his enemy had been discovered, his designs exposed, and himself obliged to leave the village, and the whole population were now as violently prejudiced in Arthur's favour, as they had formerly been against him; provoked also with themselves for their blind folly in receiving and encouraging the idle reports propagated against him, not one of which they now perceived were sufficiently well founded to stand before an impartial statement and accurate examination.
Had her parents doubted what had weighed on Emmeline's mind, the sudden light beaming in those saddened eyes, the flush kindling on those pale cheeks, the rapid movement with which she caught her father's hand, and looked in his face, as if fearful he would deceive her, all these minute but striking circumstances must have betrayed the truth.