Involuntarily, I approached her with more tenderness than my vexing
spirit had recently permitted me to show; but I recoiled from
the effects of my own attentions. I was vexed to perceive that my
approaches occasioned a start, a flutter--a shrinking inward--as
if my advance had been obtrusive, and my attempts at familiarity
offensive.
I was then little schooled in the intricacies of the female heart.
I little conjectured the origin of that seemingly paradoxical
movement of the mind, which, in the case of one, sensitive and
exquisitely delicate, prompts to flight from the very pursuit which
it would yet invite; which dreads to be suspected of the secret
which it yet most loves to cherish, and seeks to protect, by
concealment, the feelings which it may not defend; even as the bird
hides the little fledglings of its care from the hunter, whom it
dare not attack.
Stupid, and worse than stupid, my blind heart saw nothing of
this, and perverted what it saw. I construed the conduct of Julia
into matter of offence, to be taken in high dudgeon and resolutely
resented; and I drew myself up stiffly when she appeared, and
by excess of ceremonious politeness only, avoided the reproach of
brutality. Yet, even at such moments, I could see that there was
a dewy reproach in her eyes, which should have humbled me, and
made me penitent. But the effects of fifteen years of injudicious
management were not to be dissipated in a few days even by the
Ithuriel spells of love. My sense of independence and self-resource
had been stimulated to a diseased excess, until, constantly on the
QUI VIVE, it became dogged and inflexible. It was a work of time
to soften me and make me relent; and the labor then was one of my
own secret thoughts, and unbiased private decision. The attempt to
persuade or reason me into a conviction was sure to be a failure.
Months passed in this manner without effecting any serious change
in Julia, or in bringing us a step nearer to one another. Meanwhile,
the sphere of my observation and importance increased, as the
circle of my acquaintance became extended. I was regarded as a
rising young man, and one likely to be successful ultimately in
my profession. The social privileges of my friends, the Edgertons,
necessarily became mine; and it soon occurred that I encountered my
uncle and his family in circles in which it was somewhat a matter
of pride with him to be permitted to move. This, as it increased my
importance in his sight, did not diminish his pains. But he treated
me now with constant deference, though with the same unvarying
coldness. When in the presence of others, he warmed a little. I
was then "his nephew;" and he would affect to speak with great
familiarity on the subject of my business, my interests, the last
case in which I was engaged, and so forth--the object of which was
to persuade third persons that our relations were precisely as they
should be, and as people would naturally suppose them.