dreams as Madeline Lester, should deign to exercise towards him a
tenderness, that might suffer him to hope, was a thought, that when he
caught her eye unconsciously fixed upon him, and noted that her voice
grew softer and more tremulous when she addressed him, forced itself upon
his heart, and woke there a strange and irresistible emotion, which
solitude and the brooding reflection that solitude produces--a reflection
so much more intense in proportion to the paucity of living images it
dwells upon--soon ripened into love. Perhaps even, he would not have
resisted the impulse as he now did, had not at this time certain thoughts
connected with past events, been more forcibly than of late years
obtruded upon him, and thus in some measure divided his heart. By
degrees, however, those thoughts receded from their vividness, into the
habitual deep, but not oblivious, shade beneath which his commanding mind
had formerly driven them to repose; and as they thus receded, Madeline's
image grew more undisturbedly present, and his resolution to avoid its
power more fluctuating and feeble. Fate seemed bent upon bringing
together these two persons, already so attracted towards each other.
After the conversation recorded in our last chapter, between Walter and
the Student, the former, touched and softened as we have seen, in spite
of himself, had cheerfully forborne (what before he had done reluctantly)
the expressions of dislike which he had once lavished so profusely upon
Aram; and Lester, who, forward as he had seemed, had nevertheless been
hitherto a little checked in his advances to his neighbour by the
hostility of his son, now felt no scruple to deter him from urging them
with a pertinacity that almost forbade refusal. It was Aram's constant
habit, in all seasons, to wander abroad at certain times of the day,
especially towards the evening; and if Lester failed to win entrance to
his house, he was thus enabled to meet the Student in his frequent
rambles, and with a seeming freedom from design. Actuated by his great
benevolence of character, Lester earnestly desired to win his solitary