“Your solitary and hopeless existence, Edmund!” she exclaimed, with a look and voice of astonishment.
“Yes, Julia; such feelings as mine must be hopeless! it is the only apology that can be made for their presumption.”
“Lord Arandale has refused his consent,” thought Julia, “and shall I add to his evident affliction? I imagined him perfectly happy! and that he had found means to be so, independent of all his first friends; or I could never have been so unkind to him.” At the conclusion of this reflection, she looked up with an expression that, for a moment, almost restored him to happiness.
The company were now filing off, on their way down to the carriages. Edmund and Julia were the last in the room. She paused, gave him her hand, and said:—“I once promised you to be always your friend! I renew that promise now; and I know I can also answer for the unshaken continuance of Frances’s kind regard. Will this, in any degree, console you, Edmund, under those mortified and disappointed feelings, of which you speak so bitterly?” And she spoke a little bitterly herself.
“Oh, yes! It will—it must—it does!” he exclaimed, pressing the offered hand to his lips. She drew it gently away; but took his arm as they followed the rest of the party. If he considered it so very wrong even to hope, she thought, why did he ask her to marry him? and Lady Susan, herself, had told Frances that he had done so.
Edmund was, or at least believed that he ought to have been, cheered in one point of view; for Julia appeared to be reconciled to him, appeared to have pardoned his rashness: but, he was saddened too: indeed, there was a peculiar dreariness about his present feelings; for it now seemed to him, that they fully understood each other, and that Julia had forbid him to hope. Yet, he thought, he had never hoped. What was it, then, of which he now deplored the loss? Some undefined, unacknowledged expectations, must have been founded on the pleasure he had so often, with intoxicating delight, marked in Julia, when he had, by look or word, betrayed some part of that love, he thought it his duty not to declare; till his birth should be distinctly ascertained; a contingency which, when put in high spirits by a smile, he had, sometimes, thought by no means improbable! Now, Julia knew, (he believed,) the full extent of his love; and she had showed any thing but gratification. She had, it is true, mingled with her displeasure at his presumption, a generous compassion for his sufferings; and she had offered him, mournfully, but kindly, friendship as a consolation for the hopelessness of the passion she had yet decidedly checked. And was not Julia’s friendship an inestimable treasure? Was he not an object of regard, of affection to her?—Oh, how delightful that idea; were it not blasted by the thought, that he must, one day, see her bestow warmer, dearer, fonder feelings on another! on some one, who having all else that this world can give, must have their abundance crowned by the bliss of possessing Julia’s love! Or should she ever be Henry’s? He looked on her as he asked himself this question; but he thought of the mountainous waves of the sea in a storm, and, for a moment, felt the sinful wish that he might be overwhelmed by them, ere so terrible an apprehension should be realized!