ery to
myself. I think not;--indeed I believe I can truly say that I
never loved him; though at one moment I fancied that I did;
and if, yesterday, you had come to me and told me that my
uncle had consented to my marrying him,--nay, that he wished
me to do so;--had you yourself asked me to marry your brother,
I should have refused--yesterday, to-day, always."

"Then you have quarrelled with him," quickly rejoined Mrs.
Middleton; "and this marriage of his is the result of wounded
feeling,--perhaps of a misunderstanding between you. Poor
Henry!"

There was a little irritation in my aunt's manner of saying
these last words; and I was on the point of telling her what
Henry had proposed and urged upon me in our last interview,
and of thus justifying myself from any imputation of having
behaved ill to him; but I instantly felt that this would be
unfair and ungenerous, especially at this moment. Besides, was
I not in his power, and could I venture to accuse him who held
in his hands the secret of my fate? So again I shut up my
heart, and closed my lips to her who loved me with a love
which would have made the discovery of that fatal secret
almost amount to a death-blow.

She seemed now to understand better my anxiety for the
happiness of her brother and of his young wife. She seemed to
think that I was conscious of having, in some manner or other,
behaved ill to Henry, and driven him to this marriage, and
that I was anxious to make all the amends in my power. But
when she had drawn the paper before her, and was beginning to
write, she put down her pen, and exclaimed: "But if he does
not love her, what induced him to choose _her?_ To make us all
wretched!--to inflict upon himself such a connection! I cannot
understand it!"

Again and again she cross-questioned me about Alice, about
that one memorable visit of mine to Bridman Manor, about
Henry's manner to her, and hers to him. I answered in the way
best calculated to remove her prejudices, to allay her
anxieties, to encourage her hopes of eventual happiness for
Henry. My angry feelings with regard to him had for the time
quite subsided; I pitied him from the bottom of my heart, and
remembered what he had said of a similarity in our destinies.
It seemed to me, that he too was bound by some stern
necessity, by some secret influence, to work mischief to
himself and to others; and it was with intense eagerness that
after Mrs. Middleton had written a kind and soothing lett