"
All this while, the young lady at table had remained almost silent; and
Middleton had only occasionally been reminded of her by the necessity of
performing some of those offices which put people at table under a
Christian necessity of recognizing one another. He was, to say the
truth, somewhat interested in her, yet not strongly attracted by the
neutral tint of her dress, and the neutral character of her manners. She
did not seem to be handsome, although, with her face full before him, he
had not quite made up his mind on this point.
April 14th.--So here was Middleton, now at length seeing indistinctly a
thread, to which the thread that he had so long held in his hand--the
hereditary thread that ancestor after ancestor had handed down--might
seem ready to join on. He felt as if they were the two points of an
electric chain, which being joined, an instantaneous effect must follow.
Earnestly, as he would have looked forward to this moment (had he in
sober reason ever put any real weight on the fantasy in pursuit of which
he had wandered so far) he now, that it actually appeared to be realizing
itself, paused with a vague sensation of alarm. The mystery was
evidently one of sorrow, if not of crime, and he felt as if that sorrow
and crime might not have been annihilated even by being buried out of
human sight and remembrance so long.
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