to controul your temper, whether you were
overheard or not."

He coloured in his turn, and bit his lips; but suddenly
changing the subject, he abruptly said, "How do you like
Alice?"

"As I like all the beautiful things which God has made, and
that man has not spoilt."

"She is very pretty; and she has a kind of cleverness too; but
there is something tame and insipid about her,
notwithstanding. In fact, I do not understand her."

"How should the serpent understand the dove?" I muttered to
myself, and then my heart smote me for my unkind thoughts of
Henry. I felt myself guilty of ingratitude, nay more, of
hypocrisy, in thinking evil of one whose society I so much
valued, and who certainly devoted himself to me with no common
assiduity. I never could exactly explain to myself what my
feelings were with regard to him at that time. As I said
before, it would have been a severe trial to me had he left
Elmsley, even for a short time.

Hour after hour I spent in conversation with him, hardly aware
of the lapse of time, so great was the fascination that his
powerful, original, and, withal, cultivated understanding,
exercised over me; and yet, at the same time, an involuntary
feeling of mistrust--an unaccountable shudder of
repugnance--now and then shot over me as I listened to the
sound of his voice, or as my eyes met his--and yet they were
beautiful; his eyes, with their deep-gray colour that looked
black by candle-light, and the fringing of their dark lashes.
There was something reined in the shape of his small aquiline
nose--in the form of his wide but well-formed mouth, both of
which, when he was eager, bore an expression which I can only
compare to that of a fiery horse when he tosses his mane, and
snuffs the air of the plain which he is about to scour. Then
why was it, that as I looked on his beauty, day by day, I
found pleasure, if not happiness, in his devotion to me--why
was it, that, now and then, the words _fearful_, _false,_ and
_heartless_, darted across my mind as I thought of him? and
were instantaneously followed by a thrill of self-reproach,
for I was _false_ to him, not he to me; false in the contrast
between my outward demeanour and my secret and involuntary
impulses. It was I that was heartless, in feeling no real
attachment for one whose life evinced an unvarying devotedness
to me. False! Heartless! Was I really so? Resentment had
hardened my heart against Edward Middleton, and every kind
feelin