How dear is your happiness to me,--how holy I deem the charge I have assumed,--you may know by my telling you this.

Never mother idolized a son as I do Ernest.

He is precious as my heart's best blood,--he is the one idol that comes between me and my God.

My love is more intense for the anxiety I feel on his account.

If I could have prevented his loving;--but how could I, in the constant presence of an object so formed to inspire all the romance of love?
I knew the serpent slept in the bottom of the fountain, and when the waters were stirred it would wake and uncoil.