ith
which he spoke; wondering and trembling a little. She had guessed what
he meant the night before, as has been said, and this had touched her
with a little thrill of awakened feeling; but the innocent girl knew no
more about passion than a child, and when she saw it, glowing and
ardent, appealing to her, she was half-alarmed, half-overawed by the
strange sight. What answer could she make to him? She did not know what
to say. To reject him altogether was not in Ursula's heart; but she
could not respond to that strange, new, overwhelming sentiment, which
put a light in his eyes which she dared not meet; which dazzled her when
she ventured a glance at him. "Was he to go away?" he asked, his voice,
too, sounding musical and full of touching chords. Ursula could not tell
him to go away either. What she did say to him, she never quite knew;
but at least, whatever it was, it left him hopeful, if unsatisfied.

And since that time her mind had been in a strange confusion, a
confusion strange but sweet. Gratified vanity is not a pretty title to
give to any feeling, and yet that mixture of gratification and
gratitude, and penetrating pleasure in the fact of being elevated from
an often-scolded and imperfect child to an admired and worshipped woman
is, perhaps, of all the sensations that feminine youth is conscious of,
the most poignant in its sweetness. It went through her whole life;
sometimes it made her laugh when she was all alone, and there was
nothing of a laughter-producing nature in her way; and sometimes it made
her cry, both the crying and the laughter being one. It was strange,
very strange, and yet sweet. Under the influence of this, and of the
secret homage which Northcote paid her whenever they met; and which she
now understood as she had never understood it before, the girl's whole
nature expanded, though she did not know. She was becoming sweet to the
children, to puzzled Janey, to every one around her. Her little
petulances were all subdued. She was more sympathetic than she had ever
been before. And yet she was not in love with her lover. It was only
that the sunshine of young life had caught her, that the highest
gratification of youth had fallen to her share unawares. All this might
have been, and yet some one else come in to secure Ursula's real love;
but in the mean time she was all the happier, all the better for the
love which she did not return.

This is a digression from our immediate subject, which w