on.

Now she felt acutely the bitterness of it all. That she had afforded him
some encouragement, that she had cooperated in the first place to make
the setting of it all quite perfect, that she had lent him her assurance
that she was amicably disposed towards him, and that her action in
regard to the miniature, while apparently innocent enough, was fraught
with significance for Stephen in view of his intimate connections with
the events of the past two years, that after all perhaps she had been
entirely unreasonable throughout it all; these were the thoughts which
excited, both in the truth of their reality and in the knowledge of the
hopes they had alternately raised and blasted in Stephen, the bitter
sorrow which was the cause of her mingled pain and regret.

What would he think of her now? What could he think? Plainly he must
consider her a cold, austere being, devoid of all feeling and
appreciation. He had given her the best that was in him and had made
bold enough to appraise her of it. Sincerity was manifest in his every
gesture and word, and yet she had made him feel as if his protestations
had been repugnant to her. She knew his nature, his extreme diffidence
in matters of this kind, his power of resolution, and she feared that
once having tried and failed, he was lost to her forever.

And yet she knew that she grieved not for herself but for him. Her stern
refusal had only caused him the greater pain. Stephen would, perhaps,
misunderstand as he had misunderstood her in the past and it was the
thought of the vast discomfiture she had occasioned in him that stung
her with sorrow.

Her warm, generous heart now chided her for her apparent indifference.
There was no other name for it. What could he deduce from her behavior
except that she was a cold, ungrateful, irresolute creature who did not
know her own mind or the promptings of her own heart! She had flung him
from her smarting and wounded, after he had summoned his entire strength
to whisper to her what she would have given worlds to hear, but which
had only confounded and startled her by its suddenness.

And yet she loved him. She knew it and kept repeating it over and over
again to her own self. No one before or since had struck so responsive a
chord from her heart strings. There had been no other ideal to which she
had shaped the pictures of her mind. Stephen was her paragon of
excellence and to him the faculties of her soul had turned of their own
moo