I would rather a thousand times you would say, 'Gabriella, I do feel kindly towards you,' than utter any thing so formal, and apparently so insincere." I was really hurt.

I thought he was mocking my credulity, or measuring the height and depth of my girlish vanity.

I did not want to be compared to a star, a lone and distant star, nor to think of him as an astronomer gazing up at me with telescopic eye.

My heart was overflowing with gentle, natural thoughts.

I wanted human sympathy, not cold and glittering compliments.
"And do you expect to hear the language of nature here, with the buzz of empty tongues and the echo of unmeaning laughs in the ear; where, if a word of sentiment were over-heard, it would be bandied from lip to lip with hollow mockery?
Come with me into the garden, where the flowers blush in their folded leaves, beneath the love-light of yon gentle moon, where the stilly dews whisper sweet thoughts to the listening heart, and I will tell you what I have learned in Grandison Place, under the elm tree's shade, by the flower girl in the library, and from a thousand sources of which you have never dreamed." He took the hand which rested lightly on his arm, and drawing it closer to his side led the way to the steps of the piazza.