“She gave me leave to hope.”
“I am glad to hear that. And now, as you are in love, you can be jealous; and will therefore be able to tell me if you think her affections are engaged elsewhere.”
“That is a most uncomfortable suggestion,” I answered, uneasily.
“Do you think she cares about Mr. Curling?”
“I have tried to find out—and were I not in love with her, I should say, No. But the mere idea makes me jealous, and suspicious.”
“I used to think that she was attached to that man,” said my aunt, “and so took the bull by the horns, by ceasing to invite him to see us. But I really believe now, that what little nonsense there was between them, is at an end. It is impossible to suppose that a child of mine could continue to care about so insignificant a person; and certainly, since your arrival, I have had no cause whatever to suspect that she any longer thinks about him. If she has given you encouragement, I am satisfied. Conny is an honest girl, and would not dream of accepting one man’s attention, while her heart was secretly given to another.”
Here the subject of our conversation entered the room, and drove us to talk of something else.
Considering Conny knew I loved her, considering, indeed, that I had as good as proposed to her, I had rather expected that she would manifest some little degree of embarrassment on meeting my eyes, that she would colour up, perhaps, when I looked at her; in a word, that she would have exhibited by her manner a thorough consciousness of the tender experience we shared. Do you understand me, Eugenio? When you met Dorothea, after you had squeezed her hand, and muttered the statements you desired to make in her ear, you were quite satisfied to find her shy and even reserved, peeping at you askance when she thought you were not noticing, and receiving your observations—uttered in a very distant and polite tone of course, before company—with a peculiar smile and a remarkable little blush, both which your heart opened to receive, as the flower opens to the delicate dew, and both which were inexpressibly delicious, because they were unintelligible to all but you. Now Conny thrilled me with no such subtle and touching manifestations. She made no difference in her treatment of me. When my uncles returned, I got her into a corner near the piano, and talked cynicism. I was dreadfully sarcastic; sneered at everything; asked satirical questions with acidulated grins; quoted “Vanity Fair,” and was altogether fearfully bitter. She appeared sometimes amused and sometimes disconcerted by my remarks; but I won’t be sure that she heard everything I said. At last she asked me if I didn’t feel well?
“Good gracious!” I exclaimed, “what a dreadful question! Of course I am well.”
“You are bilious,” she said: “you don’t take enough exercise.”