"Indeed!" said I--"this must be looked into. It will not do for the
wife to take the husband's business from him. It looks mischievous,
Mrs. Porterfield--there's something wrong about it."
"Indeed there must be, Mr. Clifford, for only see how very sad it
makes her. I declare, she looks this last few weeks like a very
different woman. She does nothing now but mope. When she first
came here she seemed to me so cheerful and happy."
All this was so much additional wormwood to my bitter. The change
in Julia, which had even struck this blind old lady, corresponded
exactly with the date of Edgerton's arrival. When I saw the earnest
tenderness in his countenance as he watched her, while Mrs.
Porterfield was speaking, I ceased to feel any sympathy for the
intense sadness which I yet could not but see in hers. I turned
away, and leaving the table soon after, went to our chamber, but
the traces of writing were no longer to be seen. The voluminous
manuscripts had all been carefully removed. I was about to leave
the chamber when Julia met me at the door.
"Come back; sit with me," she said. "Why do you go off in such a
hurry always? Once it was not so, Edward."
"What! are you for the honeymoon again?"
"Do not smile so, and speak so irreverently!" she said, with a
reproachful earnestness that certainly seemed to me very strange,
thinking of her as I did. My evil spirit was silent. He lacked
readiness to account for it. But he was not unadroit, and moved me
to change the ground.
"But what long writing is this, Julia?"
"Ah! you are curious?"
"Scarcely."
"TELL me that you are?"
"What! at the expense of truth?"
"No! but to gratify my desire. I hoped you were; but, curious or
not, it is for you."
"Let me see it, then."
"Not yet; it is not ready."
"What! shall there be more of it?"
"Yes, a good deal."
"Indeed! but why take this labor? Why not tell me what you have to
say?"
"I wish I could, but I can not. You do not encourage me."
"What encouragement do you wish to speak to your husband?"
"Oh, much! Stay with me, dear husband."
"That will keep you from your writing."
"Ah! perhaps it will render it unnecessary."
"At all events it will keep me from mine;" and I prepared to go. She
put her hand upon my shoulder--looked into my eyes pleadingly--hers
were dewy wet--and spoke:-"Do not go-stay with me dear husband, do stay. Stay only for half
an hour."
Why did I not stay? I should ask that question of myself in vain.
When the heart grows perverse, it acquires a taste for wilfulness.
I, myself, longed to stay; could I have been persuaded that she
certainly desired it, I should have found my sweetest pleasure in
remaining. But there was the rub--that doubt! all that she said,
looked, did, seemed, through the medium of the blind heart, to be
fraudulent.