Reluctant dost thou rove?
Or grieve for friendship unreturn’d,
Or unregarded love?”
Goldsmith.
On reaching my lodgings I went to bed; but I might as well have sat up, for the dawn brightened into clear daylight before I closed my eyes. I lay thinking over my uncle’s scheme and abusing it, and wishing he had been born an idiot rather than that his mind should have stumbled upon an idea so peculiarly disagreeable.
What chiefly worried me was not his wish that I should marry Theresa—for really that was a matter altogether in my power, and a circumstance over which nobody but myself could have any control—but the very decided manner in which he had expressed himself against my love for Conny. I had not expected it. I felt insulted. I considered that my pride had received a wound. I had made sure that he would have welcomed my love for his daughter with irrepressible delight. He was so amiable a man, with so mild a manner, that the warm way in which he had attempted to annihilate my hopes impressed and affected me as if he had flown in a passion.
But I needn’t inflict all my thoughts upon you. It is enough to say that before falling asleep I had made up my mind to allow no earthly power to sunder me from my adored, and marry me to a woman I already disliked before having seen.
My uncle was very friendly next day, but did not allude to the subject of our evening’s conversation. He asked me to dine with him, and I consented; for I wanted to talk to my aunt, and get her advice and sympathy. I felt very much disposed to be cool and haughty with my uncle, to let all the fine gentleman that was pent up in my bosom fly out, and resent his ruthless intrusion on what a young lady once called in my hearing, “The innermost recesses of the most secret shrine within the holy of holies of the heart’s core.” But his amiability disarmed me. The antiseptic dews of his generous nature fell upon my temper, and kept it sweet in spite of my earnest belief that the sleeping lion inside me ought to get up, stiffen his tail, and shake the forests.
My aunt and Conny were out when I got to Grove End, and did not return until twenty minutes before dinner-time, so that I could have no conversation until we had dined. At table, I was very calm and pensive, and felt so sentimental, that I think, had I been asked, I could have written an ode fit to appear in any private album. I watched Conny incessantly: too much so, I fear, for I believe I embarrassed her. I wish she had laughed: I wish she had sneered: I wish she had insulted me. I wanted steeling. But no! she gave me thrilling looks, kept her countenance, and eat so languidly, that my heart leapt up, like Wordsworth’s when he saw the blue sky; I believed that her father’s scheme had been unfolded to her, and that the fear of losing me had taught her to know she LOVED!
Neither my uncle nor aunt conversed with their wonted ease. A cloud overhung us. I noticed that, when Thomas spoke, his wife grew absent; that when he addressed her, she grew disdainful. Yes! there had been a quarrel; no, not a quarrel, but an argument.