ade them all uneasy, when I answered in this way.
They knew that I fully understood her.

It was at the time when my troubles were at their highest, and when
I was most incensed against my lover for his ingratitude in caring as
little as he did for the innumerable distresses and mortifications I
underwent on his account, that your dear friend, Mr Gowan, appeared
at the house. He had been intimate there for a long time, but had been
abroad. He understood the state of things at a glance, and he understood
me.

He was the first person I had ever seen in my life who had understood
me. He was not in the house three times before I knew that he
accompanied every movement of my mind. In his coldly easy way with all
of them, and with me, and with the whole subject, I saw it clearly.
In his light protestations of admiration of my future husband, in his
enthusiasm regarding our engagement and our prospects, in his hopeful
congratulations on our future wealth and his despondent references to
his own poverty--all equally hollow, and jesting, and full of mockery--I
saw it clearly. He made me feel more and more resentful, and more and
more contemptible, by always presenting to me everything that surrounded
me with some new hateful light upon it, while he pretended to exhibit
it in its best aspect for my admiration and his own. He was like the
dressed-up Death in the Dutch series; whatever figure he took upon his
arm, whether it was youth or age, beauty or ugliness, whether he danced
with it, sang with it, played with it, or prayed with it, he made it
ghastly.

You will understand, then, that when your dear friend complimented me,
he really condoled with me; that when he soothed me under my vexations,
he laid bare every smarting wound I had; that when he declared my
'faithful swain' to be 'the most loving young fellow in the world, with
the tenderest heart that ever beat,' he touched my old misgiving that
I was made ridiculous. These were not great services, you may say. They
were acceptable to me, because they echoed my own mind, and confirmed
my own knowledge. I soon began to like the society of your dear friend
better than any other.

When I perceived (which I did, almost as soon) that jealousy was growing
out of this, I liked this society still better. Had I not been subject
to jealousy, and were the endurances to be all mine? No. Let him know
what it was! I was delighted that he should know it; I was delighted
that he should