“Oh!” cried Rushbrook with warmth, “I loved her, before I ever beheld her.”
“Loved her!” cried Sandford, with astonishment, “You are talking of what you did not intend.”
“I am, indeed:” returned he in confusion, “I fell by accident on the word love.”
“And by the same accident stumbled on the word beauty; and thus by accident, am I come to the truth of all your professions.”
Rushbrook knew that he loved; and though his affection had sprung from the most laudable motives, yet was he ashamed of it, as of a vice—he rose, he walked about the room, and he did not look Sandford in the face for a quarter of an hour: Sandford, satisfied that he had judged rightly, and yet unwilling to be too hard upon a passion, which he readily believed must have had many noble virtues for its foundation, now got up and went away, without saying a word in censure, though not a word in approbation.
It was in the month of October, and just dark, at the time Rushbrook was left alone, yet in the agitation of his mind, arising from the subject on which he had been talking, he found it impossible to remain in the house, and therefore walked into the fields; but there was another instigation, more powerful than the necessity of walking—it was the allurement of passing along that path where he had last seen Lady Matilda, and where, for the only time, she had condescended to speak to him divested of haughtiness; and with a gentleness that dwelt upon his memory beyond all her other endowments.
Here, he retraced his own steps repeatedly, his whole imagination engrossed with her idea, till the sound of her father’s carriage returning from his visit, roused him from the delusion of his trance, to the dread of the confusion and embarrassment he should endure, on next meeting him. He hoped Sandford might be present, and yet he was now, almost as much ashamed of seeing him, as his uncle, whom he had so lately offended.
Loath to leave the spot where he was, as to enter the house, he remained there, till he considered it would be ill manners, in his present humiliated situation, not to show himself at the usual supper hour, which was immediately.
As he laid his hand upon the door of the apartment to open it, he was sorry to hear by Lord Elmwood’s voice, he was in the room before him; for there was something much more conspicuously distressing, in entering where he already was, than had his uncle come in after him. He found himself, however, re-assured, by overhearing the Earl laugh and speak in a tone expressive of the utmost good humour to Sandford, who was with him.
Yet again, he felt all the awkwardness of his own situation; but making one courageous effort, opened the door and entered. Lord Elmwood had been away half the day, had dined abroad, and it was necessary to take some notice of his return; Rushbrook, therefore, bowed humbly, and what was more to his advantage, he looked humbly. His uncle made a slight return to the salutation, but continued the recital he had begun to Sandford; then sat down to the supper table—supped—and passed the whole evening without saying a syllable, or even casting a look, in remembrance of what had passed in the morning. Or if there was any token, that shewed he remembered the circumstance at all, it was the putting his glass to his nephew’s, when Rushbrook called for wine, and drinking at the time he did.