come upon himself early in life,--and was there, an established
fact. The girl was to him unlike any other girl;--or any man. There
was to him a sweetness in her companionship which he could not
analyse. She was not beautiful. She had none of the charms of
fashion. He had never seen her well-dressed,--according to the ideas
of dress which he found to be prevailing in the world. She was a
little thing, who, as a man's wife, could attract no attention by
figure, form, or outward manner,--one who had quietly submitted
herself to the position of a governess, and who did not seem to think
that in doing so she obtained less than her due. But yet he knew
her to be better than all the rest. For him, at any rate, she was
better than all the rest. Her little hand was cool and sweet to him.
Sometimes when he was heated and hard at work, he would fancy how it
would be with him if she were by him, and would lay it on his brow.
There was a sparkle in her eye that had to him more of sympathy in it
than could be conveyed by all the other eyes in the world. There was
an expression in her mouth when she smiled, which was more eloquent
to him than any sound. There were a reality and a truth about her
which came home to him, and made themselves known to him as firm
rocks which could not be shaken. He had never declared to himself
that deceit or hypocrisy in a woman was especially abominable. As a
rule he looked for it in women, and would say that some amount of
affectation was necessary to a woman's character. He knew that his
cousin Lizzie was a little liar,--that she was, as Lucy had said, a
pretty animal that would turn and bite;--and yet he liked his cousin
Lizzie. He did not want women to be perfect,--so he would say. But
Lucy Morris, in his eyes, was perfect; and when he told her that she
was ever the queen who reigned in those castles in the air which he
built,--as others build them, he told her no more than the truth.

He had fallen into these feelings and could not now avoid them, or be
quit of them;--but he could have been silent respecting them. He knew
that in former days, down at Bobsborough, he had not been altogether
silent. When he had first seen her at Fawn Court he had not been
altogether silent. But he had been warned away from Fawn Court, and
in that very warning there was conveyed, as it were, an absolution
from the effect of words hitherto spoken. Though he had called Lady
Fawn an old fool, he had known that it was so