The immediate impulse of Juliet urged her to remonstrance, or flight; but it was the impulse of habit, not of reason; an instant, and a look of Harleigh, represented that the total change of her situation, authorized, on all sides, a total change of conduct.
Every part of her frame partook of the emotion with which this sudden consciousness beat at her heart; while her silence, her unresisting stay, and the sight of her varying complexion, thrilled to the soul of Harleigh, with an encouragement that he trembled with impatience to exchange for certainty. 'At last,—at last,—may I,' he cried, 'under the sanction of a brother, presume upon obtaining a hearing with some little remittance of reserve? of mistrust?'
Juliet dropt her head.
'Will not Miss Granville be more gracious than Miss Ellis has been? Miss Granville can have no tie but what is voluntary: no hovering doubts, no chilling scruples, no fancied engagements—'
A half sigh, of too recent recollection, heaved the breast of Juliet.
'To plead,' he continued, 'against all confidence; to freeze every avenue to sympathy; to repel, or wound every rising hope! Miss Granville, is wholly independent; mistress of her heart, mistress of herself—'
'No, Mr Harleigh, no!' with quickness, though with gentleness, interrupted Juliet.
Harleigh, momentarily startled, ventured to bend his head below her bonnet; and saw, then, that the blush which had visited, flown, and re-visited her face, had fixed itself in the deepest tint upon her cheek. He gazed upon her in ecstatic silence, till, looking up, and, for the first time, suffering her eyes willingly to meet his, 'No, Mr Harleigh, no!' she softly repeated, 'I am not so independent!' A smile then beamed over her features, so radiant, so embellishing, that Harleigh wondered he had ever thought her beautiful before, as she added, 'Had I an hundred hearts,—ten thousand times you must have conquered them all!'
Rapture itself, now, is too cold a word,—or too common a one,—to give an adequate idea of the bliss of Harleigh. He took her no longer reluctant hand, and she felt upon it a burning tear as he pressed it to his lips; but his joy was unutterable. The change was so great, so sudden, and so exquisite, from all he most dreaded to all he most desired, that language seemed futile for its expression: and to look at her without fearing to alarm or offend her; to meet, with the softest assurance of partial favour, those eyes hitherto so coldly averted; to hold, unresisted, the fair hand that, but the moment before, it seemed sacrilege even to wish to touch; so, only, could he demonstrate the fulness of his transport, the fervour of his gratitude, the perfection of his felicity.
In Juliet, though happiness was not less exalted, pleasure wore the chastened garb of moderation, even in the midst of a frankness that laid open her heart. Yet, seeing his suit thus authorized by her brother, and certain of the approbation of the Bishop, and of her uncle, to so equal and honourable an alliance; she indulged her soft propensities in his favour, by gently conceding avowals, that rewarded not alone his persevering constancy, but her own long and difficult forbearance. 'Many efforts, many conflicts,' she cried, 'in my cruel trials, I have certainly found harder; but none, none so distasteful, as the unremitting necessity of seeming always impenetrable—where most I was sensitive!'