The Evil Genius: A Domestic Story — page 187: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

176 THE EVIL GENIUS. the company of ladies. The next change in my life associated me with an Arctic expedition. God forbid I should tell you of what men go through who are lost in the regions of eternal ice! Let me only say I was preserved—miraculously preserved—to profit by that dreadful experience. It made anew man of me; it altered me (I hope for the better) into what Iam now. Oh, I feel that I ought to have kept my secret yesterday—I mean my daring to love you. I should have waited till you knew more of me; till my conduct pleased you, perhaps, and spoke for me. You won’t laugh, Iam sure, if I confess (at my age!) that I am inexperienced. Never till I met you have I known what true love is—and this is at forty years old. How some people would laugh! And yet it seems melancholy to me.” ‘*No; not melancholy.” Her voice trembled. Agitation, which it was not a pain, but a luxury to feel, was gently taking possession of her. Where another man might have seen that her tenderness was getting the better of her discretion, and might have presumed on the discovery, this man, innocentlv blind to his own interests, never even attempted to take advantage of her. No more certain way could have been devised by the most artful lover of touching the heart of a generous woman, and making it his own. The in-- fluence exerted over Catherine by the virtues of Bennydeck’s character—his unaffected kindness, his manly sympathy, his re- ligious convictions so deeply felt, so modestly restrained from claiming notice—had been steadily increasing in the intimacy of daily intercourse. Catherine had never felt his ascendancy over her as strongly as she felt itnow. By fine degrees the warning remembrances which had hitherto made her hesitate, lost their hold on her memory. Hardly conscious herself of what she was doing, she began to search his feelings in his own presence. Such love as his had been unknown in her experience; the luxury of looking into it, and sounding it to its inmost depths, was more than the woman’s nature could resist. ‘‘T think you hardly do yourself justice,” she said. ‘‘ Surely you don’t regret having felt for me so truly, when I told you yesterday that my old friend had deserted me ?” ‘* No, indeed!” ‘“Do you like to remember that you showed no jealous curi- osity to know who my friend was?” ‘‘T should have been ashamed of myself if I had asked the question.” ‘‘And did you believe that I had a good motive—a motive which you might yourself have appreciated—for not telling you the name of that friend ?” ‘‘Is he some one whom I know ?” ‘*Ought you to ask me that, after what I have just said ?”’ ‘Pray forgive me! I spoke without thinking.” ‘‘T can hardly believe it, when I remember how you spoke to me yesterday, I could never have supposed, before we became acquainted with each other, that it was in the nature of a man to understand me so perfectly, to be so gentle and so considerate in feeling for my distress. You confused me a little, I must EONNICOOOKS ,eO©