unfavorable one.

It was a relief when bed-time came, and he was alone in what was always
called his room, where he soon fell asleep, to dream of Lufa and the
luxuries around her--facilities accumulated even to incumbrance, and
grown antagonistic to comfort, as Helots to liberty. How different from
his dreams were the things that stood around them! how different his
thoughts from those of the father who knelt in the moonlight at the side
of his bed, and said something to Him who never sleeps! When he woke,
his first feeling was a pang: the things about him were as walls between
him and Lufa!

From indifference, or preoccupation--from some cause--he avoided any
_tete-a-tete_ with Molly. He had no true idea of the girl, neither
indeed was capable of one. She was a whole nature; he was of many parts,
not yet begun to cohere. This unlikeness, probably, was at the root of
his avoidance of her. Perhaps he had an undefined sense of rebuke, and
feared her without being aware of it. Never going further than half-way
into a thing, he had never relished Molly's questions; they went deeper
than he saw difficulty; he was not even conscious of the darkness upon
which Molly desired light cast. And now when, either from instinct, or
sense of presence, he became aware that Molly was looking at him, he did
not like it; he felt as if she saw some lack of harmony, between his
consciousness and his history. He was annoyed, even irritated, with the
olive-cheeked, black-eyed girl, who had been for so many years like his
sister: she was making remarks upon him in that questioning laboratory
of her brain!

Molly was indeed trying to understand what had gone different between
them. She had never felt Walter come very near her, for he was not one