Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 1.djvu/153

Rh alteration in my toilet, hastened away to Wildfell Hall, with the book in my pocket; for it was destined for the shelves of Mrs. Graham.

"What, then, had she and you got on so well together as to come to the giving and receiving of presents?"—Not precisely, old buck; this was my first experiment in that line; and I was very anxious to see the result of it.

We had met several times since the Bay excursion, and I had found she was not averse to my company, provided, I confined my conversation to the discussion of abstract matters, or topics of common interest;—the moment I touched upon the sentimental or the complimentary, or made the slightest approach to tenderness in word or look, I was not only punished by an immediate change in her manner at the time, but doomed to find her more cold and distant, if not entirely, inaccessible, when next I sought her company. This circumstance did not greatly disconcert me however, because, I attributed it, not so much to any dislike of