“No; not melancholy.”
Her voice trembled. Agitation, which it was not a pain but a luxury to feel, was gently taking possession of her. Where another man might have seen that her tenderness was getting the better of her discretion, and might have presumed on the discovery, this man, innocently blind to his own interests, never even attempted to take advantage of her. No more certain way could have been devised, by the most artful lover, of touching the heart of a generous woman, and making it his own. The influence exerted over Catherine by the virtues of Bennydeck’s character—his unaffected kindness, his manly sympathy, his religious convictions so deeply felt, so modestly restrained from claiming notice—had been steadily increasing in the intimacy of daily intercourse. Catherine had never felt his ascendancy over her as strongly as she felt it now. By fine degrees, the warning remembrances which had hitherto made her hesitate lost their hold on her memory. Hardly conscious herself of what she was doing, she began to search his feelings in his own presence. Such love as his had been unknown in her experience; the luxury of looking into it, and sounding it to its inmost depths, was more than the woman’s nature could resist.
“I think you hardly do yourself justice,” she said. “Surely you don’t regret having felt for me so truly, when I told you yesterday that my old friend had deserted me?”
“No, indeed!”
“Do you like to remember that you showed no jealous curiosity to know who my friend was?”
“I should have been ashamed of myself if I had asked the question.”
“And did you believe that I had a good motive—a motive which you might yourself have appreciated—for not telling you the name of that friend?”
“Is he some one whom I know?”
“Ought you to ask me that, after what I have just said?”
“Pray forgive me! I spoke without thinking.”