on had expressed himself sensible of this conviction,
reproached him for unjust jealousy and unworthy suspicion. And the
tone of the reproach varied in each letter; sometimes it was gay
and satirizing; at others soft and expostulatory; at others gravely
reasoning, and often haughtily indignant. Still, throughout the whole
correspondence, on the part of the mistress, there was a sufficient
stamp of individuality to give a shrewd examiner some probable guess at
the writer's character. He would have judged her, perhaps, capable of
strong and ardent feeling, but ordinarily of a light and capricious
turn, and seemingly prope to imagine and to resent offence. With these
letters were mingled others in Brandon's writing,--of how different,
of how impassioned a description! All that a deep, proud, meditative,
exacting character could dream of love given, or require of love
returned, was poured burningly over the pages; yet they were full
of reproach, of jealousy, of a nice and torturing observation, as
calculated to wound as the ardour might be fitted to charm; and often
the bitter tendency to disdain that distinguished his temperament broke
through the fondest enthusiasm of courtship or the softest outpourings
of love.

"You saw me not yesterday," he wrote in one letter, "but I saw you;
all day I was by you: you gave not a look which passed me unnoticed;
you made not a movement which I did not chronicle in my memory.
Julia, do you tremble when I tell you this? Yes, if you have a
heart, I know these words would stab it to the core! You may affect
to answer me indignantly! Wise dissembler! it is very skilful,
very, to assume anger when you have no reply. I repeat during the
whole of that party of pleasure (pleasure! well, your tastes, it
must be acknowledged, are exquisite!) which you enjoyed yesterday,
and which you so faintly asked me to share, my eye was on you. You
did not know that I was in the wood when you took the grin of the
incomparable Digby, with so pretty a semblance of alarm at the
moment the snake which my foot disturbed glided across your path.
You did not know I was within hearing of the tent where you made so
agreeable a repast, and from which your laughter sent peals so many
and so numerous. Laughter! O Julia, can you tell me that you love,
and yet be happy, even to mirth, when I am away! Love! O God, how
differen