CHAPTER II.
“Sudden was the trembling joy
Of my soul, when mine eyes, lifted to seek
The bounding deer, have met thy secret gaze,
Mighty king, fairest among thy thousands!”
The interview described in the concluding pages of our last chapter, re-established, though certainly on very mistaken grounds, a kind of confidence between our hero and her who had ever been the darling of his childhood; banishing the momentary estrangement to which the first birth of a still fonder attachment had given rise.
It seemed to be now understood on both sides that they were to be quite brother and sister; and, accordingly, under the pleasing illusion, Edmund henceforward paid and Julia received every devotion that a growing and blinding passion could suggest, except open declaration: yet did confessions pass from heart to heart every time their eyes met, while their understandings pretended to know nothing about the matter; for each of them took care not to ask themselves any questions on the subject as long as they felt so perfectly happy as they now did in each other’s society. Even the attentions of Lord Borrowdale soon almost ceased to pain Edmund: he could distinctly see that they were, at least, indifferent, if not annoying to Julia; and, though he did not dare to ask himself why, the conviction was a source of infinite joy to him!