Tuesday.--More than seven years have passed since I began this journal!
I have just been looking over it from the commencement. Many and various
are the feelings which it attempts to describe--anger, pique, joy,
sorrow, hope, pleasure, weariness, ennui; but never, never once,
humiliation or remorse!--these were not doomed to be my portion in the
bright years of my earliest youth. How shall I describe them now? I
have received--I have read, as well as my tears would let me, a long
letter from Julia. It is true that I have not dared to write to her:
when shall I answer this? She has showed me the state of my heart;
I more than suspected it before. Could I have dreamed two months--six
weeks--since that I should have a single feeling of which I could be
ashamed? He has just been here He--the only one in the world, for all
the world seems concentred in him. He observed my distress, for I looked
on him; and my lips quivered and my eyes were full of tears. He came to
me--he sat next to me--he whispered his interest, his anxiety--and was
this all? Have I loved before I even knew that I was beloved? No, no;
the tongue was silent, but the eye, the cheek, the manner--alas! these
have been but too eloquent!
Wednesday.--It was so sweet to listen to his low and tender voice; to
watch the expression of his countenance--even to breathe the air that he
inhaled. But now that I know its cause, I feel that this pleasure is a
crime, and I am miserable even when he is with me. He has not been here
to-day. It is past three. Will he come? I rise from my seat--I go to
the window for breath--I am restless, agitated, disturbed. Lady Margaret
speaks to me--I scarcely answer her. My boy--yes, my dear, dear Henry
comes, and I feel that I am again a mother. Never will I betray that
duty, though I have forgotten one as sacred though less dear! Never
shall my son have cause to blush for his parent! I will fly hence--
I will see him no more!