Also, having ridden a good deal with
ladies, he was now able to give Arctura not a few hints to the
improvement of her seat, her hand, her courage; nor was there any
nearer road, he judged from what he knew of his cousin, to her
confidence and gratitude, than showing her a better way in a thing.
But thinking that in teaching her to ride he could make her forget
the man who had been teaching her to live, he was not a little
mistaken in the woman he desired to captivate.
He did not yet love her even in the way he called loving, else he
might have been less confident; but he found her very pleasing.
Invigorated by the bright frosty air, the life of the animal under
her, and the exultation of rapid motion, she seemed better in
health, more merry and full of life, than he had ever seen her: he
put all down to his success with her. He was incapable of suspecting
how little of it was owing to him; incapable of believing how much
to the fact that she now turned to the father of spirits without
fear, almost without doubt; thought of him as the root of every
delight of the world--at the heart of the horse she rode, in the
wind that blew joy into hers as she swept through its yielding
bosom; knew him as altogether loving and true, the father of Jesus
Christ, as like him as like could be like--more like him than any
one else in the universe could be like another--like him as only
eternal son can be like eternal father.
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