Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 2.djvu/357

Rh of earnest and passionate love; pleading his cause with all the bold yet artful eloquence he could summon to his aid. But I cut short his appeal, and repulsed him so determinately, so decidedly, and with such a mixture of scornful indignation tempered with cool, dispassionate sorrow and pity for his benighted mind, that he withdrew, astonished, mortified, and discomforted; and, a few days after, I heard that he had departed for London. He returned however in eight or nine weeks—and, did not entirely keep aloof from me, but comported himself in so remarkable a manner that his quick-sighted sister could not fail to notice the change.

"What have you done to Walter, Mrs. Huntingdon?" said she one morning, when I had called at the Grove, and he had just left the room after exchanging a few words of the coldest civility. "He has been so extremely ceremonious and stately of late, I can't imagine what it is all about, unless you have