Madam Dorrington of the Dene - v. 2 Author:William Howitt Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. We open this chapter with a new portion of the life of Mrs. Dorrington. Our last chapter ought, according to the received rules of fiction, to ha... more »ve closed our story. We have married our heroine, and there we ought to have left her in all the supposed felicity of wedded life; hut as our narrative happens to have in it more truth than fiction, the rule does not apply to us. We follow rules and canons of our own. Madam Dorrington is only just now become Madam Dorrington of the Dene. We have yet to see some things which befell her there. We have to learn more of life than consists in the perils, labyrinths, and triumphs of courtship.There are other dangers than those which beset the path of maiden beauty; there are other joys than those of happy lovers, in the roseate days of passion and auspicious union; there are other tears than those that fall in the adverse hours of a struggling attachment, or on the white veil of the departing bride. In the morning of life, we may roam amongst sparkling dews, listen to the songs of birds, and be exposed to an occasional shower ; but it is towards noon-day that we feel a deeper and more solemn tone in the scenes around us. The dews are exhaled, the birds often cease to sing, and the awful voice of the thunder coming from the intense blackness of the shrouded sky, sinks with a profound feeling into the heart—awaking thoughts of God, of eternity, of things more sacred and sublime than are whispered to us in life's earlier tones. It is then that the passions and the interests come into play, or rather into intense action—for there is no play in it—which try the spirit, and rend from existence all its romantic drapery. Then stand forth, in their undisguised strength, and often in their most frightful deformity, the deep-rooted p...« less