“On me too,” he rejoined, “Henry forced, what he termed confidence. He has even given me to read, on our last voyage, passages, purporting to be from your correspondence with himself, and containing messages to me, reiterating your injunctions of secrecy. And once, he showed me a picture, which he said you had given him, asking if I thought it like. It was like, really like. Judge with what feelings I must have seen him approach it to his lips, and replace it in his bosom! A heart-sickening sensation followed, and my selfish regrets were, for a time, lost in the certainty that you had cast away the inestimable treasure of your affections on a man who did not truly love you; for, I felt that one who did, had been incapable of the indelicate display I had just witnessed.” Here Fitz-Ullin unconsciously sighed, as though the sense of present felicity had been overborne by the painful recollections which pressed upon him, then added: “After this, every circumstance, and when we met again, Julia, every look and word was misconstrued by me into confirmations of that fatal belief, which, from the moment it took possession of me, poisoned my very existence, and benumbed every faculty but that of suffering! Why, Julia, in that agonizing interview in the refreshment room at Lord L⸺’s, such was the infatuation of my despair, that I believed we fully understood each other. You seemed to me to acknowledge, that you had received my proposals; for you even said that my letter had given you much pain; I thought of course, you spoke of this letter.”