Chapter vi.

Corinne flattered herself in secret with having captivated the heart of Oswald, but as she knew his reserve and his severity, she had not dared make known to him all the interest he had excited in her heart, though she was disposed, by character, to conceal nothing that she felt.  Perhaps also she believed that even in speaking on subjects foreign to their growing passion there was a tenderness of accent in their voice, which betrayed their mutual affection, and that a secret avowal of love was painted in their looks, and in that melancholy and veiled language which penetrates so deeply into the soul.

One morning, when Corinne was getting ready to continue her walks with Oswald, she received a note from him, somewhat ceremonious, informing her that the bad state of his health would confine him at home for some days.  A painful disquietude seized upon the heart of Corinne:  she at first feared he might be dangerously ill, but the Count d’Erfeuil, whom she saw at night, told her it was one of those melancholy fits to which he was very much subject and, during which he would not speak to anybody.—­“He will not see even me,” said the Count d’Erfeuil, “when he is so.”—­This even me was highly displeasing to Corinne, but she was upon her guard not to betray any symptoms of that displeasure to the only man who might be able to give her news of Lord Nelville.  She interrogated him, flattering herself that a man of so much apparent levity would tell her all he knew.  But on a sudden, whether he wished to conceal from her by an air of mystery that Oswald had confided nothing to him, or whether he believed it more honourable to refuse what was asked of him than to grant it, he opposed an invincible silence to the ardent curiosity of Corinne.  She who had always had an ascendency over those with whom she conversed, could not comprehend why all her means of persuasion were without effect upon the Count d’Erfeuil:  did she not know that there is nothing in the world so inflexible as self-love?

What resource remained then to Corinne to know what was passing in the heart of Oswald! should she write to him?  The formality it would require was too foreign to her open disposition.  Three days glided away, during which she did not see Lord Nelville, and was tormented by the most cruel agitation.—­“What have I done then,” said she, “to drive him from me?  I have not told him that I loved him.—­I have not been guilty of that crime, so terrible in England, but so pardonable in Italy.  Has he guessed it?  But why should he esteem me the less for it?” Oswald had only absented himself from Corinne because he felt the power of her charms becoming too strong to resist.  Though he had not given his word to espouse Lucilia Edgermond, he knew it was his father’s wish that she should become his wife, and to that wish he desired to conform.  Besides, Corinne was not known by her real name, and