what
she undertakes to do, has something admirable in it, approaching to the
heroic. She is certainly an extraordinary girl! Her retired manner,
and invariable propriety of behaviour made me think it next to
impossible she could grant the same favours indiscriminately to every
one that she did to me. Yet this now appears to be the fact. She must
have done the very same with C----, invited him into the house to carry
on a closer intrigue with her, and then commenced the double game with
both together. She always "despised looks." This was a favourite
phrase with her, and one of the hooks which she baited for me. Nothing
could win her but a man's behaviour and sentiments. Besides, she could
never like another--she was a martyr to disappointed affection--and
friendship was all she could even extend to any other man. All the
time, she was making signals, playing off her pretty person, and having
occasional interviews in the street with this very man, whom she could
only have taken so sudden and violent a liking to him from his looks,
his personal appearance, and what she probably conjectured of his
circumstances. Her sister had married a counsellor--the Miss F----'s,
who kept the house before, had done so too--and so would she. "There
was a precedent for it." Yet if she was so desperately enamoured of
this new acquaintance, if he had displaced THE LITTLE IMAGE from her
breast, if he was become her SECOND "unalterable attachment" (which I
would have given my life to have been) why continue the same
unwarrantable familiarities with me to the last, and promise that they
should be renewed on my return (if I had not unfortunately stumbled upon
the truth to her aunt) and yet keep up the same refined cant about her
old attachment all the time, as if it was that which stood in the way of
my pretensions, and not her faithlessness to it? "If one swerves from
one, one shall swerve from another"--was her excuse for not returning my
regard. Yet that which I thought a prophecy, was I suspect a history.
She had swerved twice from her avowed engagements, first to me, and then
from me to another. If she made a fool of me, what did she make of her
lover? I fancy he has put that question to himself. I said nothing to
him about the amount of the presents; which is another damning
circumstance, that might have opened my eyes long before; but they were
shut by my fond affection, which "turned all to favour and to
prettiness." S