Some time before, he had shown me the
portrait of the girl who had promised to be his wife. She, of course,
could trust HIM anywhere, everywhere.
Mrs. Falchion had seen the change in me, and, I am sure, guessed the new
direction of my thoughts, and knew that I wished to take refuge in a new
companionship--a thing, indeed, not easily to be achieved, as I felt now;
for no girl of delicate and proud temper would complacently regard a
hasty transference of attention from another to herself. Besides, it
would be neither courteous nor reasonable to break with Mrs. Falchion
abruptly. The error was mine, not hers. She had not my knowledge of the
immediate circumstances, which made my position morally untenable. She
showed unembarrassed ignorance of the change. At the same time I caught a
tone of voice and a manner which showed she was not actually oblivious,
but was touched in that nerve called vanity; and from this much feminine
hatred springs.
I made up my mind to begin a course of scientific reading, and was seated
in my cabin, vainly trying to digest a treatise on the pathology of the
nervous system, when Hungerford appeared at the door.
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