silent love for her was the one event since her marriage which had
left a lingering sweetness in her darkened and lonely heart. It may be
that all the blighted hopes, all the frustrated longings which
gradually clouded Julie's mind, gathered, by a not unnatural trick of
imagination, about this man--whose manners, sentiments, and character
seemed to have so much in common with her own. This idea still
presented itself to her mind fitfully and vaguely, like a dream; yet
from that dream, which always ended in a sigh, Julie awoke to greater
wretchedness, to keener consciousness of the latent anguish brooding
beneath her imaginary bliss.

Occasionally her self-pity took wilder and more daring flights. She
determined to have happiness at any cost; but still more often she lay
a helpless victim of an indescribable numbing stupor, the words she
heard had no meaning to her, or the thoughts which arose in her mind
were so vague and indistinct that she could not find language to
express them. Balked of the wishes of her heart, realities jarred
harshly upon her girlish dreams of life, but she was obliged to devour
her tears. To whom could she make complaint? Of whom be understood?
She possessed, moreover, that highest degree of woman's sensitive
pride, the exquisite delicacy of feeling which silences useless
complainings and declines to use an advantage to gain a triumph which
can only humiliate both victor and vanquished.

Julie tried to endow M. d'Aiglemont with her own abilities and
virtues, flattering herself that thus she might enjoy the happiness
lacking in her lot. All her woman's ingenuity and tack was employed in
making the best of the situation; pure waste of pains unsuspected by
him, whom she thus strengthened in his despotism. There were moments
when misery became an intoxication, expelling all ideas, all