XV
HEARTSICK WITH THOUGHT
Two Gentlemen of Verona, i. I
Instead of returning to Boston next morning, Maurice remained at
Brookfield for ten days. Mrs. Morison decided the matter, and it is not
to be supposed that he was entirely unwilling to be constrained.
He naturally saw much of Berenice, and he passed hours in brooding over
thoughts of her. He was convinced that she was not engaged. She had
spoken of Stanford's visit, and it had seemed to Wynne that she had
conveyed the impression that her relations to the visitor were less
intimate than might at first sight appear. If she were free--the
thought made his heart beat, and he wondered if, had the circumstances
been different, he might himself have won her. He tormented himself
with all her ways and words; the smiles she gave him, the trifling
attentions which were addressed to the guest, but which seemed to have
a touch of something deeper, that might be due to her thinking of him
as her preserver, but which might even go beyond that. There was a
delicious torture in all this reverie, in these continual self-
reproaches which involved the thought of her, the remembrance of how
she had looked, how she had spoken, how she had moved.
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