aid Julia, smiling
maliciously.

'Begin then,' retorted Vetranio, 'by imagining that the strangeness of
this girl's situation, and the originality of her ideas, invested her
with an attraction for me, which the charms of her person and age
contributed immensely to heighten. She delighted my faculties as a
poet, as much as she fired my feelings as a man; and I determined to
lure her from the tyrannical protection of her father by the employment
of every artifice that my ingenuity could suggest. I began by teaching
her to exercise for herself the talent which had so attracted her in
another. By the familiarity engendered on both sides by such an
occupation, I hoped to gain as much in affection from her as she
acquired in skill from me; but to my astonishment, I still found her as
indifferent towards the master, and as tender towards the music, as she
had appeared at our first interview. If she had repelled my advances,
if they had overwhelmed her with confusion, I could have adapted myself
to her humour, I should have felt the encouragement of hope; but the
coldness, the carelessness, the unnatural, incomprehensible ease with
which she received even my caresses, utterly disconcerted me. It
seemed as if she could only regard me as a moving statue, as a mere
impersonation, immaterial as the science I was teaching her. If I
spoke, she hardly looked on me; if I moved, she scarcely noticed the
action. I could not consider it dislike; she seemed to gentle to
nourish such a feeling for any creature on earth. I could not believe
it coldness; she was all life, all agitation, if she heard only a few
notes of music. When she touched the chords of the instrument, her
whole frame trembled. Her eyes, mild, serious, and thoughtful when she
looked on me, now brightened with delight, now softened with tears,
when she listened to the lute. As day by day her skill in music
increased, so her manner towards me grew more inexplicably indifferent.
At length, weary of the constant disappointments that I experienced,
and determined to make a last effort to touch her heart by awakening
her gratitude, I presented her with the very lute which she had at
first heard, and on which she had now learned to play. Never have I
seen any human being so rapturously delighted as this incomprehensible
girl when she received the instrument from my hands. She alternately
wept and laughed over it, she kissed it, fondled it, spoke to it, as if
it had bee