me; from which condition I awoke with a touch of horror to find myself
paying her very warm compliments; for she had been coquettish and
charming to cheer me, and her voice was sweet. We reached a point in our
conversation I know not where, but I must have spoken with some warmth.
'Then guess,' said she, 'what William is suffering for your sake now,
Harry'; that is, 'suffering in remaining away from me on your account';
and thus, in an instant, with a skill so intuitive as to be almost
unconscious, she twirled me round to a right sense of my position, and
set me reflecting, whether a love that clad me in such imperfect armour
as to leave me penetrable to these feminine graces--a plump figure,
swinging skirts, dewy dark eyelids, laughing red lips--could indeed be
absolute love. And if it was not love of the immortal kind, what was I?
I looked back on the thought like the ship on its furrow through the
waters, and saw every mortal perplexity, and death under. My love of
Ottilia delusion? Then life was delusion! I contemplated Julia in
alarm, somewhat in the light fair witches were looked on when the faggots
were piled for them. The sense of her unholy attractions abased and
mortified me: and it set me thinking on the strangeness of my disregard
of Mdlle. Jenny Chassediane when in Germany, who was far sprightlier,
if not prettier, and, as I remembered, had done me the favour to make
discreet play with her eyelids in our encounters, and long eyes in
passing. I caught myself regretting my coldness of that period; for
which regrets I could have swung the scourge upon my miserable flesh.
Ottilia's features seemed dying out of my mind. 'Poor darling Harry!'
Julia sighed. 'And d' ye know, the sight of a young man far gone in love
gives me the trembles?' I rallied her concerning the ladder scene in my
old schooldays, and the tender things she had uttered to Heriot. She
answered, 'Oh, I think I got them out of poets and chapters about
lovemaking, or I felt it very much. And that's what I miss in William;
he can't talk soft nice nonsense. I believe him, he would if he could,