“Oh! you know Frances, I—don’t mean—I mean, one’s own friends,” said Julia. “Now ask yourself: could you ever love a stranger, as you love those you have loved all your life? As you love me for instance?”
“A stranger,” said Frances, considering, “no, certainly, not while the stranger continued to be a stranger.”
“Well Henry, you know, is no stranger, so one of my guesses may be right, or perhaps you like Edmund better—I am sure I do.”
Edmund had remained perfectly silent; for a few seconds, he had actually been stunned by the extacy of an irresistible conviction that Julia was saying, as plainly as words could express it, that she loved him, and that she never would or could love any one else! But, on her appeal to Frances in reply to the interruption of the latter, his short lived transport faded. “She alludes to the gentle ties of relationship,” said he to himself, “and having known no feeling but that of calm and gradually formed affection, she cannot even imagine any other.” A momentary pang indeed shot across his heart, as Frances alluded to Henry; for Julia might have loved him all her life, if she loved him at all; but he was not, as Frances observed, a character very likely to inspire love. Then her manner, the expression of her eyes, the tones of her voice; how different, when she addressed himself, from what they were when addressing her cousin! This was, however, a subject not to be too closely examined, though it served for the present to banish all painful thoughts respecting Henry.
“They talk, you know,” said Frances, “of love at first sight!” “Oh!” replied Julia, “such people must either have no real friends, and therefore no real affections, or be, themselves, incapable of feeling a real attachment!”
“What do you call a real attachment?” asked Frances. “Why, one founded on—on—having all one’s life known, that the—friend—one loves unites every quality that is noble and estimable, not only in one’s own opinion,” replied Julia, blushing deeper and deeper at each word, “but in that of those, whose judgment one respects, with all that is gentle, kind, and amiable towards oneself!” Edmund felt an almost irresistible desire to press her hand as she said this, nor could he be quite certain that he did not do so. “It was Mr. Jackson,” she added, in a hurried manner, “that was explaining the subject the other day. He said, you know, Frances, that it was because we are formed to find perfect happiness hereafter in loving absolute perfection, that we experience so much delight in attaching ourselves, in this life, to what, on earth, comes nearest to perfection! And what can we know of the perfections of a stranger?”
“Why, not till we discover them,” replied Frances, “but then, should they prove greater than those of our older acquaintances, by your own argument of loving best what comes nearest to perfection, the stranger must deserve and obtain our preference.”
“Oh! impossible!” exclaimed Julia.
“What is impossible?” asked Frances. Julia made no answer, and Frances, after a moment or two of silence, enquired of Edmund, if the Lancer whom they had observed driving his curricle round the lake yesterday evening, were the same they had seen at the Regatta. Edmund looked in her face without meaning or reply. His thoughts had been too differently employed to be so easily brought to bear on the identity of a Lancer. “You see,” said Frances, “he is thinking of his First Love. We ought not to tease him with questions on less interesting subjects. I have been considering about it, Edmund,” she continued, “and I cannot see what harm it would be for you to be married to Lady Susan, when it would make you both happy.”
“Lady Susan!” repeated Edmund, “I am not thinking about Lady Susan, I assure you, Frances!”