her martial
encounter with him with weapons in her hand; she dwelt upon the delight
of her feelings when he disarmed her. She imagined that it had given her
the greatest happiness when he bound her: and whatever she had done
afterward to injure him, or to vex him, presented itself to her as only
an innocent means of attracting his attention. She cursed their
separation. She bewailed the sleepy state into which she had fallen. She
execrated the insidious lazy routine which had betrayed her into
accepting so insignificant a bridegroom. She was transformed--doubly
transformed, forward or backward, whichever way we like to take it.

"She kept her feelings entirely to herself; but if any one could have
divined them and shared them with her, he could not have blamed her: for
indeed the bridegroom could not sustain a comparison with the other as
soon as they were seen together. If a sort of regard to the one could
not be refused, the other excited the fullest trust and confidence. If
one made an agreeable acquaintance, the other we should desire for a
companion; and in extraordinary cases, where higher demands might have
to be made on them, the bridegroom was a person to be utterly despaired
of, while the other would give the feeling of perfect security.

"There is a peculiar innate tact in women which discovers to them
differences of this kind; and they have cause as well as occasion to
cultivate it.

"The more the fair bride was nourishing all these feelings in secret,
the less opportunity there was for any one to speak a word which could
tell in favor of her bridegroom, to remind her of what her duty and
their relative position advised and commanded--indeed, what an
unalterable necessity seemed now irrevocably to require; the poor heart
gave itself up entirely to its passion.

"On one side she was bound inextricably to the bridegroom by the world,
by her family, and by her own promise; on the other, the ambitious young
man made no secret of what he was thinking and planning for himself,
conducting himself toward her no more than a kind but not at all a
tender brother, and speaking of his departure as immediately impending;
and now it seemed as if her early childish spirit woke up again in her
with all its spleen and violence, and was preparing itself in its
distemper, on this higher stage of life, to work more effectively and
destructively. She determined that she would die to punish the once
hated; and now so passiona