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have certainly found harder; but none, none so distasteful, as the unremitting necessity of seeming always impenetrable—where most I was sensitive!"

"By sweetness such as this," cried Harleigh, "you would almost persuade me to rejoice at a suspense that has nearly maddened me! Yet,—could you have conceived the agony, the despair of my mind, at your icy, relentless silence! not once to trust me as a friend! not one moment to confide in my integrity! never to consult, to commune, to speak, nor to hear!—You smile?—Can it be at the pain you have inflicted?"—

"Oh no, no, no! If I smile, 'tis at the greater pain I have, I trust, averted! While conscious that I might, eventually, be chained to another, every duty admonished me to resist every feeling!—Yet with hope always, ultimately, before me, I had not the force to utter a word,—a baneful word!—that might teach you to renounce me!—