“That I should ever be able to win the love of one whose very friendship I had lost by declaring my attachment, one whom I now appeared to inspire with dread, was a thing quite hopeless. I saw, indeed, what were Lord L⸺’s flattering wishes. The very idea seemed to shake the powers of my mind, to darken my judgment, madden my passions, and harden my heart; for there were moments of bitterness, in which I asked myself, should I set your feelings at defiance, and avail myself of Lord L⸺’s authority to obtain you! The thought was of course rejected with disdain; but, its ever having crossed my imagination, was sufficient to prove, that I was no longer master of myself.” “I wish, Edmund,” said Julia, when in the evening the lovers again directed their steps towards the shrubbery walk, “you would tell me what it was that caused your peculiar austerity of manner on board the Euphrasia.” “Why, that is a question which I cannot very well answer, Julia,” said Fitz-Ullin, smiling and taking her hand. She persisted, however. “You must remember,” he said at length, “that I believed you perfectly acquainted with my sentiments. In the innocent friendship of your manner, therefore, I saw—what appeared to me, seeing through a false medium, the weakness, if I must say it, of a woman who could not altogether resign the admiration of, even a rejected lover. And, in a woman who was herself engaged, it seemed doubly cruel, to foster with smiles (that, to one who already loved, and believed his love known to her who smiled, must bewilder every sense; and that for the mere idle gratification of vanity,) an unfortunate passion which she could not return, which, in fact, she had already cast from her!”