unsettled feelings had preluded the
deeper emotion that her image now excited within him. But the main cause
of his present and growing attachment, had been in the evident sentiment
of kindness which he could not but feel Madeline bore towards him. So
retiring a nature as his, might never have harboured love, if the love
bore the character of presumption; but that one so beautiful beyond
his dreams as Madeline Lester, should deign to exercise towards him a
tenderness, that might suffer him to hope, was a thought, that when he
caught her eye unconsciously fixed upon him, and noted that her voice
grew softer and more tremulous when she addressed him, forced itself
upon his heart, and woke there a strange and irresistible emotion,
which solitude and the brooding reflection that solitude produces--a
reflection so much more intense in proportion to the paucity of living
images it dwells upon--soon ripened into love. Perhaps even, he would
not have resisted the impulse as he now did, had not at this time
certain thoughts connected with past events, been more forcibly than
of late years obtruded upon him, and thus in some measure divided his
heart. By degrees, however, those thoughts receded from their vividness,
into the habitual deep, but not oblivious, shade beneath which his
commanding mind had formerly driven them to repose; and as they thus
receded, Madeline's image grew more undisturbedly present, and his
resolution to avoid its power more fluctuating and feeble. Fate seemed
bent upon bringing together these two persons, already so attracted
towards each other. After the conversation recorded in our last chapter,
between Walter and the Student, the former, touched and softened as we
have seen, in spite of himself, had cheerfully forborne (what before
he had done reluctantly) the expressions of dislike which he had once
lavished so profusely upon Aram; and Lester, who, forward as he had
seemed, had nevertheless been hitherto a little checked in his advances
to his neighbour by the hostility of his son, now felt no scruple
to deter him from urging them with a pertinacity that almost forbade
refusal. It was Aram's constant habit, in all seasons, to wander abroad
at certain times of the day, especially towards the evening; and if
Lester failed to win entrance to his house, he was thus enabled to meet
the Student in his frequent rambles, and with a seeming freedom from
design. Actuated by his great benevolence of character, L