All that remained to him after
her demise was a beautiful little girl, around whom his affections
gathered with a degree of tenderness that was rendered almost painful
by the apprehension of her loss. Agnes, from her eighth or ninth year,
began to manifest slight symptoms of the same fatal malady which had
carried away her mother. These attacks filled his heart with those
fearful forebodings, which, whilst they threw him into a state of terror
and alarm, at the same time rendered the love he bore her such as may
be imagined, but cannot be expressed. It is only when we feel the
probability of losing a beloved object that the heart awakens to a more
exquisite perception of its affections for it, and wonders, when the
painful symptoms of disease appear, why it was heretofore unconscious
of the full extent of its love. Such was the nature of Mr. Hamilton's
feelings for his daughter, whenever the short cough or hectic cheek
happened to make their appearance from time to time, and foreshadow,
as it were, the certainty of an early death; and then he should be
childless--a lonely man in the world, possessing a heart overflowing
with affection, and yet without an object on which he could lavish it,
as now, with happiness and delight.
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