Thus did this change come about. I seem perhaps to have dashed too
suddenly into the description, but thus suddenly did it happen. In one
sentence I have passed from the idea of unspeakable happiness to that
of unspeakable grief but they were thus closely linked together. We
had remained five months in London three of joy and two of sorrow. My
father and I were now seldom alone or if we were he generally kept
silence with his eyes fixed on the ground--the dark full orbs in which
before I delighted to read all sweet and gentle feeling shadowed from
my sight by their lids and the long lashes that fringed them. When we
were in company he affected gaiety but I wept to hear his hollow
laugh--begun by an empty smile and often ending in a bitter sneer such
as never before this fatal period had wrinkled his lips. When others
were there he often spoke to me and his eyes perpetually followed my
slightest motion. His accents whenever he addressed me were cold and
constrained although his voice would tremble when he perceived that my
full heart choked the answer to words proffered with a mien yet new to
me.
But days of peaceful melancholy were of rare occurence[:] they were
often broken in upon by gusts of passion that drove me as a weak boat
on a stormy sea to seek a cove for shelter; but the winds blew from my
native harbour and I was cast far, far out untill shattered I perished
when the tempest had passed and the sea was apparently calm. I do not
know that I can describe his emotions: sometimes he only betrayed them
by a word or gesture, and then retired to his chamber and I crept as
near it as I dared and listened with fear to every sound, yet still
more dreading a sudden silence--dreading I knew not what, but ever
full of fear.
It was after one tremendous day when his eyes had glared on me like
lightning--and his voice sharp and broken seemed unable to express the
extent of his emotion that in the evening when I was alone he joined
me with a calm countenance, and not noticing my tears which I quickly
dried when he approached, told me that in three days that [_sic_] he
intended to remove with me to his estate in Yorkshire, and bidding me
prepare left me hastily as if afraid of being questioned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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