From this time my intercourse with William Edgerton was, on my part,

one of the most painful and difficult constraint. I had nothing to

reproach him with; no grounds whatever for quarrel; and could not,

in his case--regarding the long intimacy which I had maintained with

himself and father, and the obligations which were due from me to

both--adopt such a manner of reserve and distance as to produce

the result of indifference and estrangement which I now anxiously

desired. I was still compelled to meet him--meet him, too, with

an affectation of good feeling and good humor, which I soon found

it, of all things in the world, the most difficult even to pretend.

How much would I have given could he only have provoked me to anger

on any ground--could he have given me an occasion for difference

of any sort or to any degree--anything which could have justified

a mutual falling off from the old intimacy! But William Edgerton

was meekness and kindness itself. His confidence in me was of

the most unobservant, suspicionless character; either that, or

I succeeded better than I thought in the effort to maintain the

external aspects of old friendship. He saw nothing of change in my

deportment. He seemed not to see it, at least; and came as usual,

or more frequently than usual, to my house, until, at length, the

studio of my wife was quite as much his as hers--nay, more; for,

after a brief space, whether it was that Julia saw what troubled me,

or felt herself the imprudence of Edgerton's conduct, she almost

entirely surrendered it to him. She was not now so often to be seen

in it.

This proceeding alarmed me. I dreaded lest my secret should be

discovered. I was shocked lest my wife should suppose me jealous.

The feeling is one which carries with it a sufficiently severe

commentary, in the fact that most men are heartily ashamed to be

thought to suffer from it. But, if it vexed me to think that she

should know or suspect the truth, how much more was I troubled

lest it should be seen or suspected by others! This fear led to

new circumspection. I now affected levities of demeanor and remark;

studiously absented myself from home of an evening, leaving my wife

with Edgerton, or any other friend who happened to be present; and,

though I began no practices of profligacy, such as are common to

young scapegraces in all times, I yet, to some moderate extent,

affected them.

A tone of sadness now marked the features of my wife. There was

an expression of anxiety in her countenance, which, amid all her

previous sufferings, I had never seen there before. She did not

complain; but sometimes, when we sat alone together, I reading,

perhaps, and she sewing, she would drop her work in her lap, and

sigh suddenly and deeply, as if the first shadows of the upgathering

gloom were beginning to cloud her young and innocent spirit, and

force her apprehensions into utterance. This did not escape me, but

I read its signification, as witches are said to read the Bible,

backward. A gloomier fancy filled my brain as I heard her unconscious

sigh.




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