"I have no doubt he is amiable--he is amiable--but that is not
enough for a man. He must be something more than amiable, if he
would escape the imputation of being feeble--something more if he
would be anything!"
Julia looked at me with eyes of profound and dilating astonishment.
Having got thus far, it was easy to advance. The first step is half
the journey in all such cases.
"William Edgerton is a little too amiable, perhaps, for his own
good. It makes him listless and worthless. He will do nothing at
pictures, wasting his time only when he should be at his business."
"But did I not understand you, Edward, that he was a man of fortune,
and independent of his profession?" she answered timidly.
"Even that will not justify a man in becoming a trifler. No man
should waste his time in painting, unless he makes a trade of it."
"But his leisure, Edward," suggested Julia, with a look of increasing
timidity.
"His leisure, indeed, Julia;--but he has been here all day--day
after day. If painting is such a passion with him, let him abandon
law and take to it. But he should not pursue one art while processing
another. It is as if a man hankered after that which he yet lacked
the courage to challenge and pursue openly.' "I don't think you love pictures as you used to, Edward," she
remarked to me, after a little interval passed in unusual silence.
"Perhaps it is because I have matters of more consequence to
attend to. YOU seem sufficiently devoted to them now to excuse my
indifference."
"Surely, dear Edward, something I have done vexes you. Tell me,
husband. Do not spare me. Say, in what have I offended?"
I had not the courage to be ingenuous. Ah! if I had!
"Nay, you have not offended," I answered hastily--"I am only worried
with some unmanageable thoughts. The law, you know, is full of
provoking, exciting, irritating necessities."
She looked at ne with a kind but searching glance. My soul seemed
to shrink from that scrutiny. My eyes sunk beneath her gaze.
"I wish I knew how to console you, Edward: to make you entirely
happy. I pray for it, Edward. I thought we were always to be
so happy. Did you not promise me that you would always leave your
cares at your office--that our cottage should be sacred to love
and peace only?"
She put her arms about my neck, and looked into my face with such
a sweet, strange, persuasive smile--half mirth, half sadness--that
the evil spirit was subdued within me. I clasped her fervently in
my embrace, with all my old feelings of confidence and joy renewed.
At this moment the servant announced Mr. Edgerton, and with
a start--a movement--scarcely as gentle as it should have been, I
put the fond and still beloved woman from my embrace!