meantime, was free to puzzle over his countenance
and movements, and wonder what could be the meaning
of that peculiar interest and attachment—all
mixed up with doubt and strangeness, and inexplicably
ruled by some presiding spell—which wedded
him to this demi-convent, secluded in the built-up
core of a capital. He, I believe, never remembered
that I had eyes in my head, much less a brain behind
them.
Nor would he ever have found this out, but that one
day, while he sat in the sunshine and I was observing
the colouring of his hair, whiskers, and complexion—the
whole being of such a tone as a strong light brings
out with somewhat perilous force (indeed I recollect
I was driven to compare his beamy head in my thoughts
to that of the “golden image” which Nebuchadnezzar
the king had set up), an idea new, sudden, and startling,
riveted my attention with an over-mastering strength
and power of attraction. I know not to this day
how I looked at him: the force of surprise, and
also of conviction, made me forget myself; and I only
recovered wonted consciousness when I saw that his
notice was arrested, and that it had caught my movement
in a clear little oval mirror fixed in the side of
the window recess—by the aid of which reflector
Madame often secretly spied persons walking in the
garden below. Though of so gay and sanguine a
temperament, he was not without a certain nervous
sensitiveness which made him ill at ease under a direct,
inquiring gaze. On surprising me thus, he turned
and said, in a tone which, though courteous, had just
so much dryness in it as to mark a shade of annoyance,
as well as to give to what was said the character
of rebuke, “Mademoiselle does not spare me:
I am not vain enough to fancy that it is my merits
which attract her attention; it must then be some
defect. Dare I ask—what?”
I was confounded, as the reader may suppose, yet not
with an irrecoverable confusion; being conscious that
it was from no emotion of incautious admiration, nor
yet in a spirit of unjustifiable inquisitiveness,
that I had incurred this reproof. I might have
cleared myself on the spot, but would not. I did
not speak. I was not in the habit of speaking
to him. Suffering him, then, to think what he
chose and accuse me of what he would, I resumed some
work I had dropped, and kept my head bent over it
during the remainder of his stay. There is a
perverse mood of the mind which is rather soothed
than irritated by misconstruction; and in quarters
where we can never be rightly known, we take pleasure,
I think, in being consummately ignored. What
honest man, on being casually taken for a housebreaker,
does not feel rather tickled than vexed at the mistake?
