iven worlds to recall it--but it _was_ gone; and when we all
sat down at breakfast the next morning, and everything went on
as usual; and when, for a few days at least, Henry seemed to
take no advantage of my cowardly concession, I did not feel
its folly, or its guilt, as I ought to have done.

I could not find out by Alice's manner how far her suspicions
had been awakened, or her feelings wounded, by the discovery
of my letter to her husband. She was certainly a different
person from what she had been in the early days of her
marriage. She had altogether lost the childish artlessness
with which she used to communicate her thoughts, and relate
the incidents of her daily life and innocent occupations; but
on the other hand, she no longer avoided those subjects of
conversation, or those books, which related to the actual
state of society, or the history of the human mind. She read a
great deal; book after book I saw her carry up to her own
room, and the intense interest with which I watched, without
daring to question her, made me closely observe her course of
reading. Her mind seemed to feed upon it, and her intellect to
expand; but at the same time her cheek grew pale, and in the
expression of her countenance, what once was peace, had become
composure; and in her character, what had been only
simplicity, had grown into reserve. Her eyes were often
rivetted upon Henry, with an expression not of love or of
fear, but of deep and painful interest.

It was at the end of the third week in October that we moved
to London, and that I took possession of my new house there.

Alice's confinement was near at hand, and so was the departure
of my uncle and aunt. This was a pang which some time before
would have been inexpressibly painful to me, but now I grieved
over it--more from the recollection of what had once been my
happiness with my aunt, and of the manner in which that
happiness had passed away, than from the actual grief of
separation itself. Since my marriage, her manner to me,
without being cold, had grown constrained, and she had often
been on the point of giving utterance to something that seemed
to agitate and distress her, but which had, however, never
passed her lips. I fancied it might have reference to Henry
and Alice, and I dreaded so much her speaking to me on a
subject on which, alas! I could give no explanation, nor in
any way change my own conduct, that instead of seeking her
society during those last da