At first I supposed she did it through an affectation
of modesty, which I thought but ill became her under the peculiar
circumstances of her case; but on my renewal of the charge, I found she
repelled it with greater firmness than before. I tried it again and
again but with the same success, or rather with the same want of success.
I finally was forced to give it up; at which I very unexpectedly found
myself mortified almost beyond endurance. I was mortified, it seemed to
me, in a hundred different ways. My vanity was deeply wounded by the
reflection that I had been too stupid to discover her intentions, and at
the same time never doubting that I understood them perfectly, and also
that she, whom I had taught myself to believe nobody else would have, had
actually rejected me with all my fancied greatness. And, to cap the
whole, I then for the first time began to suspect that I was really a
little in love with her. But let it all go. I'll try and outlive it.
Others have been made fools of by the girls, but this can never with
truth be said of me.
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