He made no reply, but sunk into silence, reserve, and reverie. On our arrival at my apartments, I ventured (my cousin having left us) to expostulate with him on his unkind behaviour; but was answered with severity. Some retrospection ensued, which gradually led to the subject ever present to my thoughts.--Again I expressed a solicitude to be informed of the real state of his heart, of the nature of those mysterious obstacles, to which, when clearly ascertained, I was ready to submit.--'Had he, or had he not, an attachment, that looked to, as its _end_, a serious and legal engagement?' He appeared ruffled and discomposed.--'I ought not to be so urgent--he had already sufficiently explained himself.' He then repeated to me some particulars, apparently adverse to such a supposition--asking me, in his turn, 'If these circumstances bespoke his having any such event in view?' CHAPTER VI For some time after this he absented himself from me; and, when he returned, his manners were still more unequal; even his sentiments, and principles, at times, appeared to me equivocal, and his character seemed wholly changed. I tried, in vain, to accommodate myself to a disposition so various. My affection, my sensibility, my fear of offending--a thousand conflicting, torturing, emotions, threw a constraint over my behaviour.--My situation became absolutely intolerable--time was murdered, activity vain, virtue inefficient: yet, a secret hope inspired me, that _indifference_ could not have produced the irritations, the inequalities, that thus harrassed me. I thought, I observed a conflict in his mind; his fits of absence, and reflection, were unusual, deep, and frequent: I watched them with anxiety, with terror, with breathless expectation. My health became affected, and my mind disordered. I perceived that it was impossible to proceed, in the manner we had hitherto done, much longer--I felt that it would, inevitably, destroy me. I reflected, meditated, reasoned, with myself--'That one channel, into which my thoughts were incessantly impelled, was destructive of all order, of all connection.' New projects occurred to me, which I had never before ventured to encourage--I revolved them in my mind, examined them in every point of view, weighed their advantages and disadvantages, in a moral, in a prudential, scale.--Threatening evils appeared on all sides--I endeavoured, at once, to free my mind from prejudice, and from passion; and, in the critical and _singular_ circumstances in which I had placed myself, coolly to survey the several arguments of the case, and nicely to calculate their force and importance.