and
requested me to favour him by conducting his wife to Bulsted: proof, as
Julia said, that the two were engaged in a pretty hot tussle. She was
sure her William would not be the one to be beaten.

I led her away, rather depressed by the automaton performance assigned
to me; from which condition I awoke with a touch of horror to find
myself paying her very warm compliments; for she had been coquettish and
charming to cheer me, and her voice was sweet. We reached a point in our
conversation I know not where, but I must have spoken with some warmth.
'Then guess,' said she, 'what William is suffering for your sake now,
Harry'; that is, 'suffering in remaining away from me on your account';
and thus, in an instant, with a skill so intuitive as to be almost
unconscious, she twirled me round to a right sense of my position, and
set me reflecting, whether a love that clad me in such imperfect armour
as to leave me penetrable to these feminine graces--a plump figure,
swinging skirts, dewy dark eyelids, laughing red lips--could indeed be
absolute love. And if it was not love of the immortal kind, what was
I? I looked back on the thought like the ship on its furrow through the
waters, and saw every mortal perplexity, and death under. My love of
Ottilia delusion? Then life was delusion! I contemplated Julia in alarm,
somewhat in the light fair witches were looked on when the faggots were
piled for them. The sense of her unholy attractions abased and mortified
me: and it set me thinking on the strangeness of my disregard of Mdlle.
Jenny Chassediane when in Germany, who was far sprightlier, if not
prettier, and, as I remembered, had done me the favour to make discreet
play with her eyelids in our encounters, and long eyes in passing. I
caught myself regretting my coldness of that period; for which regrets I
could have swung the scourge upon my miserable flesh. Ottilia's features
seemed dying out of my mind. 'Poor darling Harry!' Julia sighed. 'And
d' ye know, the sight of a young man far gone in love gives me
the trembles?' I rallied her concerning the ladder scene in my old
schooldays, and the tender things she had uttered to Heriot. She
answered, 'Oh, I think I got them out of poets and chapters about
lovemaking, or I felt it very much. And that's what I miss in William;
he can't talk soft nice nonsense. I believe him, he would if he could,
but he 's like a lion of the desert--it 's a roar!'

I rejoiced when we heard the roar. C