No reply from Julia; but the twisting away, or rather the trying to twist away of the hand, the deepening of the blush, the averting of the eyes, were confirmations all sufficient. Our hero could not help still smiling, while he tried to reconcile and to sooth. This, of course, offended more than it appeased, and the hand, though it had been kissed a thousand times, still manifested signs of being an unwilling captive. Fitz-Ullin was now obliged to apologize, so that all rational conversation was put an end to. Nay, he even knelt, and succeeded in making the other hand a prisoner; but notwithstanding all this humility of attitude, the countenance had, mixed with its absolute delight, a sort of triumph in the very fulness of his felicity, with which Julia could not yet bring herself to be quite as well pleased, as with that expression which she had often remarked on former occasions, when, by giving Edmund the hundredth part of a smile, she had made him look humbly happy. After a short pause, however, employed in making his peace as well as he might, he renewed the conversation by saying, “And what could you have thought, Julia, of my reiterated declarations, that mine were but the claims of a brother?” This was another of the subjects on which she could not reply, and he went on. “I believed you justly shocked at the idea that you were about to be addressed as a lover, by one who knew your melancholy secret; and that, too, so soon after the terrible death of poor Henry. I hastened to do away such a suspicion; for, if I had a selfish hope, it was a distant one of course, and one which I did not, at the time, distinctly confess, even to myself. Under the same false impressions I viewed, with utter amazement, the composure of countenance, voice, and manner, which you maintained, when things were said by others which I heard with terror, from the supposition that the very sounds must be shocking to your ears. When, for instance, Mr. Jackson read aloud the account of the trial, which, necessarily included the circumstances of the murder. The day of the funeral too; in short, I was thrown out of every calculation. I had expected to endure much from seeing you shed tears for one who, even in death, I could have envied any testimony of your affection; I had armed myself for this trial, severe as it must have proved, but I was altogether unprepared to find the being I had loved for the tenderness of her nature, the innocence of her heart, totally without feeling, or a consummate actress, or worse, a creature capable of having formed, from mere levity, without even the excuse of a sincere though misplaced attachment, an engagement, unsanctioned by a father, and imprudent in itself.