occasions she would sometimes venture upon a good-humoured
expostulation:--"Dear sir! well, I wonder how you can be so ill-natured!
I am sure Mr. Falkland would do you any good office in the
world:"--till she was checked by some gesture of impatience and
fierceness.

At length she wholly conquered her heedlessness and inattention. But it
was too late. Mr. Tyrrel already suspected the existence of that passion
which she had thoughtlessly imbibed. His imagination, ingenious in
torment, suggested to him all the different openings in conversation, in
which she would have introduced the praise of Mr. Falkland, had she not
been placed under this unnatural restraint. Her present reserve upon the
subject was even more insufferable than her former loquacity. All his
kindness for this unhappy orphan gradually subsided. Her partiality for
the man who was the object of his unbounded abhorrence, appeared to him
as the last persecution of a malicious destiny. He figured himself as
about to be deserted by every creature in human form; all men, under the
influence of a fatal enchantment, approving only what was sophisticated
and artificial, and holding the rude and genuine offspring of nature in
mortal antipathy. Impressed with these gloomy presages, he saw Miss
Melville with no sentiments but those of rancorous aversion; and,
accustomed as he was to the uncontrolled indulgence of his propensities,
he determined to wreak upon her a signal revenge.




CHAPTER VII.