Page:The genius - Carl Grosse tr Joseph Trapp 1796.djvu/338

 I felt all the smartness of this blow, before I had time to meditate upon it, I was about to run among the servants and revoke the orders of their mistress, in her own presence, but sensible, too, that such a step would only tend to magnify the imprudence she had committed, and expose us both to the scandal of every domestic.

The more I considered this circumstance, the more was I shocked at its latent meaning. Adela was extremely irritable, she found herself much offended by me, and nothing could be more certain, than that some secret understanding subsisted between her and Don Bernardos, I had several times remarked their sly winks and furtive conversations, but I safely concluded from their imprudence, that the business had not yet come to a decisive crisis. Thus it could not be expected, that Adela should sacrifice her friend to the mere suspicions which had taken possession of my mind, and to make good such a public dismission, she must necessarily have known of some clandestine issue, I was pretty confident of their carrying on a secret correspondence, in which I naturally