rove her right. Still, these trifles produced such an effect
on me, at the time, that I purposely found fault with the dress, so as
to have an excuse for trying it on again, before I told them where
I lived, and had it sent home. Pure fancy, I dare say. Pure fancy,
perhaps, at the present moment. I don't care; I shall act on instinct
(as they say), and give up the dress. In plainer words still, I won't go
back."

"Midnight.--Midwinter came to see me as he promised. An hour has passed
since we said good-night; and here I still sit, with my pen in my hand,
thinking of him. No words of mine can describe what has passed between
us. The end of it is all I can write in these pages; and the end of it
is that he has shaken my resolution. For the first time since I saw the
easy way to Armadale's life at Thorpe Ambrose, I feel as if the man whom
I have doomed in my own thoughts had a chance of escaping me.

"Is it my love for Midwinter that has altered me? Or is it _his_ love
for _me_ that has taken possession not only of all I wish to give him,
but of all I wish to keep from him as well? I feel as if I had lost
myself--lost myself, I mean, in _him_--all through the evening. He was
in great agitation about what had happened in Somersetshire; and he made
me feel as disheartened and as wretched about it as he did. Though he
never confessed it in words, I know that Mr. Brock's death has startled
him as an ill omen for our marriage--I know it, because I feel
Mr. Brock's death as an ill omen too. The superstition--_his_
superstition--took so strong a hold on me, that when we grew calmer and
he spoke of time future--when he told me that he must either break his
engagement with his new employers or go abroad, as he is pledged to
go, on Monday next--I actually shrank at the thought of our marriage
following close on Mr. Brock's funeral; I actually said to him, in the
impulse of the moment, 'Go, and begin your new life alone! go, and leave
me here to wait for happier times.'

"He took me in his arms. He sighed, and kissed me with an angelic
tenderness. He said--oh, so softly and so sadly!--I have no life now,
apart from _you_.' As those words passed his lips, the thought seemed
to rise in my mind like an echo, 'Why not live out all the days that
are left to me, happy and harmless in a love like this!' I can't explain
it--I can't realize it. That was the thought in me at the time; and
that is the thought in me still. I see my own hand