text:  It was during the alarm of her prolonged fainting produced by the surprise of this discovery and the previous agitations (whereby perhaps the prudence rather than the affection of the eccentric lover was impeached ) that her mother searching her pocket for a bottle of volatile salts turned forth the letter lately referred to melancholy evidence of the desperate extremity to which two powerful antagonist passions--love and filial love--had driven a mind not unfortified by religion but beleaguered by despair and all its powers till resolution failed and peril impended over an otherwise almost spotless soul