unhappiness[.] If I ventured to enquire he would either leave me or
press his finger on his lips, and with a deprecating look that I could
not resist, turn away. If I wept he would gaze on me in silence but he
was no longer harsh and although he repulsed every caress yet it was
with gentleness.

He seemed to cherish a mild grief and softer emotions although sad as
a relief from despair--He contrived in many ways to nurse his
melancholy as an antidote to wilder passion[.] He perpetually
frequented the walks that had been favourites with him when he and my
mother wandered together talking of love and happiness; he collected
every relick that remained of her and always sat opposite her picture
which hung in the room fixing on it a look of sad despair--and all
this was done in a mystic and awful silence. If his passion subdued
him he locked himself in his room; and at night when he wandered
restlessly about the house, it was when every other creature slept.

It may easily be imagined that I wearied myself with conjecture to
guess the cause of his sorrow. The solution that seemed to me the most
probable was that during his residence in London he had fallen in love
with some unworthy person, and that his passion mastered him although
he would not gratify it: he loved me too well to sacrifise me to this
inclination, and that he had now visited this house that by reviving
the memory of my mother whom he so passionately adored he might weaken
the present impression. This was possible; but it was a mere
conjecture unfounded on any fact. Could there be guilt in it? He was
too upright and noble to _do_ aught that his conscience would not
approve; I did not yet know of the crime there may be in involuntary
feeling and therefore ascribed his tumultuous starts and gloomy looks
wholly to the struggles of his mind and not any as they were partly