afresh with the thought of this scene and all it implied.

I should mention that during these two months--which seemed a long life
to me from the novelty and intensity of the pleasures and pains I
underwent--my diseased anticipation in other people's consciousness
continued to torment me; now it was my father, and now my brother, now
Mrs. Filmore or her husband, and now our German courier, whose stream of
thought rushed upon me like a ringing in the ears not to be got rid of,
though it allowed my own impulses and ideas to continue their
uninterrupted course. It was like a preternaturally heightened sense of
hearing, making audible to one a roar of sound where others find perfect
stillness. The weariness and disgust of this involuntary intrusion into
other souls was counteracted only by my ignorance of Bertha, and my
growing passion for her; a passion enormously stimulated, if not
produced, by that ignorance. She was my oasis of mystery in the dreary
desert of knowledge. I had never allowed my diseased condition to betray
itself, or to drive me into any unusual speech or action, except once,
when, in a moment of peculiar bitterness against my brother, I had
forestalled some words which I knew he was going to utter--a clever
observation, which he had prepared beforehand. He had occasionally a
slightly affected hesitation in his speech, and when he paused an instant
after the second word, my impatience and jealousy impelled me to continue
the speech for him, as if it were something we had both learned by rote.
He coloured and looked astonished, as well as annoyed; and the words had
no sooner escaped my lips than I felt a shock of alarm lest such an
anticipation of words--very far from being words of course, easy to
divine--should have betrayed me as an exceptional being, a sort of quiet
energumen, whom every one, Bertha above all, would shudder at and avoid.
But I magnified, as usual, the impression any word or deed of mine could
produce on others; for no one gave any sign of having noticed my