allowed themselves to be duped. One alone was really pretty,
said nothing, and gave pleasure by her very lack of artificiality. To
her I might have been favourably inclined because of her ignorance, had
she not gloried in this, and tried to emphasize her difference from the
others by a piquant ingenuousness. One day I discovered that she had
plenty of wit, and straightway I abhorred her.

Edmee alone preserved all the freshness of sincerity and all the
distinction of natural grace. Sitting on a sofa by the side of M. de
Malesherbes, she was for me the same being that I had gazed on so many
times in the light of the setting sun, as she sat on the stone seat at
the door of Patience's cottage.

XIII

You will readily believe that all the homage paid to my cousin fanned
into fresh flames the jealousy which had been smouldering in my breast.
Since the day when, in obedience to her command, I began to devote
myself to work, I could hardly say whether I had dared to count on
her promise that she would become my wife as soon as I was able to
understand her ideas and feelings. To me, indeed, it seemed that the
time for this had already arrived; for it is certain that I understood
Edmee, better perhaps than any of the men who were paying their
addresses to her in prose and verse. I had firmly resolved not to
presume upon the oath extorted from her at Roche-Mauprat; yet, when I
remembered her last promise, freely given at the chapel window, and the
inferences which I could have drawn from her conversation with the abbe
which I had overheard in the parlour at Sainte-Severe; when I remembered
her earnestness in preventing me from going away and in directing my
education; the motherly attentions she had lavished on me during my
illness--did not all these things give me, if not some right, at least
some reason to hope? It is true that her friendship would become icy as
soon as my passion betrayed itself in words or looks; it is true that
since the first day I saw her I had not advanced a single step towards
close affection; it is also true that M. de la Marche frequently came to
the house, and that she always showed him as much friendship as myself,
though with less familiarity and more respect in it, a distinction which
was naturally due to the difference in our characters and our ages, and
did not indicate any preference for one or the other. It was possible,
therefore, to attribute her promise to the prompting of her consci