"Mr. Darcy—no," said the puzzled Mattie.
"The gentleman who—who fell in love with me when I was a child," she explained, very rapidly, and with still greater excitement, "whom I thought I had forgotten, and who had forgotten me, until I met him again."
"Oh! this is wrong!" exclaimed Mattie.
"I know it—I have owned it!" cried Harriet; "let me tell the story out. I met him, parted coldly from him, met him again, all by accident on my part; met him for a third time at the Eveleighs, with whom he had got on visiting terms; met him day after day, evening after evening there, until the spell was on me which overpowered me, and robbed me of my peace—until I loved him, Mattie!"
"And he knows——"
"He knows nothing, save that I am engaged to be another's—and that I dare scarcely think of him."
"He knows too much, I know," said Mattie, reflectively; "and he has found a way to turn you against Mr. Sidney. What a wonder he must be!"
"Poor Sidney!"
"And to think it's all over between you and him," added Mattie—"him who thinks so much of you, and is growing old to my eyes, with the fear upon him which I understand now, and which is now so natural!"
"What fear!"