' He advanced, and was about to seize her hand; but the accursed
miniature occurred to him, and he repressed his feelings, almost with
a groan. She, too, had turned away her head, and was busily engaged in
tending a flower.
'Because she has explicitly declared her feelings to me, and, sincere
in that declaration, honours me by a friendship of which alone I am
unworthy, am I to persecute her with my dishonoured overtures--the twice
rejected? No, no!'
They took their way through the park, and he soon succeeded in
re-assuming the tone that befitted their situation. Traits of the
debate, and the debaters, which newspapers cannot convey, and which
he had not yet recounted; anecdotes of Annesley and their friends, and
other gossip, were offered for her amusement. But if she were amused,
she was not lively, but singularly, unusually silent. There was only one
point on which she seemed interested, and that was his speech. When he
was cheered, and who particularly cheered; who gathered round him,
and what they said after the debate: on all these points she was most
inquisitive.
They rambled on: nurse was quite forgotten; and at length they found
themselves in the beautiful valley, rendered more lovely by the ruins of
the abbey.
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