s
still the same impenetrable face which had so powerfully impressed
me when I first saw him, but his manner, hitherto so quiet and
self-possessed, had now grown abrupt and variable. Sometimes, when he
joined us in the drawing-room at North Villa, he would suddenly stop
before we had exchanged more than three or four words, murmur something,
in a voice unlike his usual voice, about an attack of spasm and
giddiness, and leave the room. These fits of illness had something in
their nature of the same secrecy which distinguished everything else
connected with him: they produced no external signs of distortion,
no unusual paleness in his face--you could not guess what pain he was
suffering, or where he was suffering it. Latterly, I abstained from ever
asking him to join us; for the effect on Margaret of his sudden attacks
of illness was, naturally, such as to discompose her seriously for the
remainder of the evening. Whenever I saw him accidentally, at later
periods of the year, the influence of the genial summer season appeared
to produce no alteration for the better in him. I remarked that his cold
hand, which had chilled me when I took it on the raw winter night of my
return from the country, was as cold as ever, on the warm summer days
which preceded the close of my engagement at North Villa.

Such was the posture of affairs at home, and at Mr. Sherwin's, when I
went to see Margaret for the last time in my old character, on the last
night which yet remained to separate us from each other.

I had been all day preparing for our reception, on the morrow, in a
cottage which I had taken for a month, in a retired part of the country,
at some distance from London. One month's unalloyed happiness with
Margaret, away from the world and all worldly considerations, was the
Eden upon earth towards which my dearest hope and anticipations had
pointed for a whole year past--and now, now at last, those aspirations
were to be realized! All my arrangements at the cottage were completed
in time to allow me to return home, just before our usual late dinner
hour. During the meal, I provided for my month's absence from London, by
informing my father that I proposed visiting one of my country friends.
He heard me as coldly and indifferently as usual; and, as I anticipated,
did not even ask to what friend's house I was going. After dinner, I
privately informed Clara that on the morrow, before starting, I
would, in accordance with my promis