She said no eloquence could have touched her like it. "Mamma, something
said to me, 'Ay, look at him well, for that is your husband to be.'" She
even tried to solve the mystery of her _soi-disant_ sickness: "I was
disturbed by a feeling so new and so powerful,* but, above all, by having
a secret from you; the first--the last."
*Perhaps even this faint attempt at self-analysis was due to the
influence of Dr. Whately. For, by nature, young ladies of this age seldom
turn the eye inward.
"Well, darling, then why have a secret? Why not trust me, your friend as
well as your mother?"
"Ah! why, indeed? I am a puzzle to myself. I wanted you to know, and yet
I could not tell you. I kept giving you hints, and hoped so you would
take them, and make me speak out. But when I tried to tell you plump,
something kept pull--pull--pulling me inside, and I couldn't. Mark my
words! some day it will turn out that I am neither more nor less than a
fool."
Mrs. Dodd slighted this ingenious solution. She said, after a moment's
reflection, that the fault of this misunderstanding lay between the two.
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