"Now for a week's sulk! His temper is really insufferable."
His remark had one advantage, for I made it a point of honor to give the lie to it, and did not sulk; but the scene had hurt me too deeply for me to forget it, and now my resentment was fully revived, and grew stronger and stronger while I was telling the story to my aunt. Alas! my almost unconscious second-sight, that of a too sensitive child, was not in error. That puerile but painful scene symbolized the whole history of my youth, my invincible antipathy to the man who was about to take my father's place, and the blind partiality in his favor of her who ought to have defended me from the first and always.
"He detests me!" I said through my tears; "what have I done to him?"
"Calm yourself," said the kind woman. "You are just like your poor father, making the worst of all your little troubles. And now you must try to be nice to him on account of your mother, and not to give way to this violent feeling, which frightens me. Do not make an enemy of him," she added.
It was quite natural that she should speak to me in this way, and yet her earnestness appeared strange to me from that moment out. I do not know why she also seemed surprised at my answer to her question, "What do you know?" She wanted to quiet me, and she increased the apprehension with which I regarded the usurper—so I called him ever afterwards—by the slight faltering of her voice when she spoke to him.
"You will have to write to them this evening," said she at length.
Write to them! The words sickened me. They were united; never, nevermore should I be able to think of the one without thinking of the other.
"And you?"
"I have already written."
"When are they to be married?"