“True; unless, indeed, it were catching.”

I need not prolong this connubial dialogue.  It is sufficient to state that Edith Willoughby was duly installed in office on the following day; and that, much to my surprise, I found that her qualifications for the charge she had undertaken were scarcely overcolored.  She was a well-educated, elegant, and beautiful girl, of refined and fascinating manners, and possessed of one of the sweetest, gentlest dispositions that ever charmed and graced the family and social circle.  She was, I often thought, for her own chance of happiness, too ductile, too readily yielding to the wishes and fancies of others.  In a very short time I came to regard her as a daughter, and with my wife and children she was speedily a prodigious favorite.  Mary and Kate improved rapidly under her judicious tuition, and I felt for once positively grateful to busy Lady Maldon for her officious interference in my domestic arrangements.

Edith Willoughby had been domiciled with us about two years, when Mr. Harlowe, a gentleman of good descent and fine property, had occasion to call several times at my private residence on business relating to the purchase of a house in South Audley Street, the title to which exhibited by the venders was not of the most satisfactory kind.  On one occasion he stayed to dine with us, and I noticed that he seemed much struck by the appearance of our beautiful and accomplished governess.  His evident emotion startled and pained me in a much higher degree than I could have easily accounted for even to myself.  Mr. Harlowe was a widower, past his first youth certainly, but scarcely more than two or three-and-thirty years of age, wealthy, not ill-looking, and, as far as I knew, of average character in society.  Surely an excellent match, if it should come to that, for an orphan girl rich only in fine talents and gentle affections.  But I could not think so.  I disliked the man—­instinctively disliked and distrusted him; for I could assign no very positive motive for my antipathy.

“The reason why, I cannot tell,
But I don’t like thee, Dr. Fell.”

These lines indicate an unconquerable feeling which most persons have, I presume, experienced; and which frequently, I think, results from a kind of cumulative evidence of uncongeniality or unworthiness, made up of a number of slight indices of character, which, separately, may appear of little moment, but altogether, produce a strong, if undefinable, feeling of aversion.  Mr. Harlowe’s manners were bland, polished, and insinuating; his conversation was sparkling and instructive; but a cold sneer seemed to play habitually about his lips, and at times there glanced forth a concentrated, polished ferocity—­so to speak—­from his eyes, revealing hard and stony depths, which I shuddered to think a being so pure and gentle as Edith might be doomed to sound and fathom.  That he was a man of strong passions and determination of will, was testified by every curve of his square, massive head, and every line of his full countenance.