ad you to admire the beauties
that 1 admire, to take interest in the pursuits which interested me, was
happiness enough--I wished for nothing more. Then came that business of
the duel, and the affectionate kindness with which you forestalled my
every wish; the delicate tenderness and ready tact which enabled you to
be more than a daughter--a guardian angel--to my father, in the days of
his heavy sorrow--sorrow which my ungoverned passions had brought upon
his grey head--all these things endeared you to me still more. Next
followed a period of estrangement and separation, during which, as I now
see, an undefined craving for your society preyed upon my spirits, and,
as I verily believe, retarded my recovery. Hence, the moment I felt
the slightest symptoms of returning health, my determination to revisit
Heathfield. When we again met, I fancied you were ill and out of
spirits."

"It was no fancy," murmured Fanny in a low voice, as though thinking
aloud.

"Indeed!" questioned Harry; "and will you not tell me the cause?"

"Presently; I did not mean to speak--to interrupt you."

~376~~ "My sole wish and occupation," he continued, "was to endeavour
to interest and amuse you, and to restore your cheerfulness, which
I believed the anxiety and fatigue occasioned by my illness to have
banished; and I nattered myself I was in some degree succeeding, when
Lawless's arrival and his openly professed admiration of you seemed to
change the whole current of my thoughts--nay, my very nature itself. I
became sullen and morose; and the feeling of dislike with which I beheld
Lawless's attentions to you gradually strengthened to a deep and settled
hatred; it was only by exercising the most unceasing watchfulness
and self-control that I refrained from quarrelling with him; but so
engrossed was I by the painful interest I felt in all that was passing
around me, that I never gave myself time to analyse my feelings; and
it was not until the night of the charade that I became fully aware
of their true character; it was not till then I learned that happiness
could not exist for me unless you shared it. Conceive my wretchedness
when, at the very moment in which this conviction first dawned upon
me, I saw from Lawless's manner that in his attentions to you he was
evidently in earnest, and that, as far as I could judge, you were
disposed to receive those attentions favourably. My mind was instantly
made up; I only waited till events should prove w