ran out to
receive her. He had just heard of the melancholy accident that had taken place
at the village, and was terrified for the safety of his good humoured cousin. He
displayed those unpremeditated emotions which are common to almost every
individual of the human race. He was greatly shocked at the suspicion that Emily
might possibly have become the victim of a catastrophe which had thus broken out
in the dead of night. His sensations were of the most pleasing sort, when he
folded her in his arms, and fearful apprehension was instantaneously converted
into joyous certainty. Emily no sooner entered under the well-known roof, than
her spirits were brisk, and her tongue incessant in describing her danger and
her deliverance. Mr. Tyrrel had formerly been tortured with the innocent
eulogiums she pronounced of Mr. Falkland. But these were tameness itself,
compared with the rich and various eloquence that now flowed from her lips. Love
had not the same effect upon her, especially at the present moment, which it
would have had upon a person instructed to feign a blush, and inured to a
consciousness of wrong. She described his activity and his resources, the
promptitude with which every thing was conceived, and the cautious, but daring
wisdom with which it was executed. All was fairy-land and enchantment in the
tenour of her artless tale; you saw a beneficent genius surveying and controling
the whole, but could have no notion of any human means by which his purposes
were effected.
    Mr. Tyrrel listened for a while to these innocent effusions with patience;
he could even bear to hear the man applauded by whom he had just obtained so
considerable a benefit. But the theme by amplification became nauseous, and he
at length with some roughness put an end to the tale. Probably upon recollection
it appeared still more insolent and intolerable than while it was passing; the
sensation of gratitude wore off, but the hyperbolical praise that had been
bestowed still haunted his memory and sounded in his ears: Emily had entered
into the confederacy that disturbed his repose. For herself, she was wholly
unconscious of offence, and upon every occasion quoted Mr. Falkland as the model
of elegant manners and true wisdom. She was a total stranger to dissimulation;
and she could not conceive that any one beheld the object of her admiration with
less partiality than herself. Her artless love became more fervent than ever.
She sometimes flattered herself that nothing less than a reciprocal passion
could have prompted Mr. Falkland to the desperate attempt of saving her from the
flames; and she trusted that this passion would speedily declare itself, as well
as induce the