loud the general voice might be in giving me encouragement and however fervent the emotions and to which it roused me i heard her word of praise as i heard nothing else at least once a week and sometimes oftener i rode over there and passed the evening i usually rode back at night for the old unhappy sense was always hovering about me now � most sorrowfully when i left her � and i was glad to be up and out rather than wandering over the past in weary or miserable dreams i wore away the longest part of many wild sad nights in those rides as i went the thoughts that had occupied me in my long absence or if i were to say rather that i listened to the echoes of those thoughts i should better express the truth they spoke to me from afar off i had put them at a distance and accepted my inevitable place when i read to what i wrote when i saw her listening face moved her to smiles or tears and heard her cordial voice so earnest on the of that imaginative world in which i lived i thought what a fate mine might have been � but only thought so as i had thought after i was married to what i could have wished my wife to be my duty to who loved me with a love which if i i wronged most and poorly and could never restore my assurance that i who had worked out my own destiny and won what i had set my heart on had no right to murmur and must bear what i felt and what i had learned but i loved her and now it even became some consolation to me vaguely to conceive a distant day when i might it when all this should be over when i could say so it was when i came home and now i am old and i never have loved since i she did not once show me any change in herself what she always had been to me she still was wholly between my aunt and me there had been something in this since the night of my return which i cannot call a restraint or an of the subject so much as an implied understanding that we thought of it r r the personal history and experience together but did not shape our thoughts into words when according to our old custom we sat before the at night we often fell into this train as naturally and as to each other as if we had said so but we preserved an unbroken silence i believed that she had read or partly read my thoughts that night and that she fully comprehended why i gave mine no more distinct expression this christmas time being come and having no new confidence in me a doubt that had several times arisen in my mind � whether she could have that perception of the true state of my breast which restrained her with the apprehension of giving me pain � began to me heavily if that were so my sacrifice was nothing my obligation to her and every poor action i had shrunk from i was doing i resolved to set this right beyond all doubt � if such a barrier were between us to break it down at once with a determined hand it was � what lasting reason have i to remember it � a cold harsh winter day there had been snow some hours before and it lay not deep but hard frozen on the ground out at sea beyond my window the wind blew from the north i had been thinking of it sweeping over those mountain of snow in then inaccessible to any human foot and had been which was the those solitary regions or a deserted ocean to day trot said my aunt putting her head in at the door yes said i i am going over to it s a good day for a ride i hope your horse may think so too said my aunt but at present he is holding down his head and his ears standing before the door there as if he thought his stable my aunt i may observe allowed my horse on the forbidden ground but had not at all toward the he will be fresh enough presently said i the ride will do his master good at all events observed my aunt glancing at the papers on my table ah child you pass a good many hours here i never thought when i used to read books what work it was to write them it s work enough to read them sometimes i as to the writing it has its own charms aunt ah i see said my aunt ambition love of approbation sympathy and much more i suppose well go along with you do you know anything more said i standing before her � she had patted me on the shoulder and sat down in my chair of that attachment of she looked up in my face a little while before replying i think i do trot are you confirmed in your impression i inquired � i think i am trot she looked so at me with a kind of doubt or pity or suspense in her affection that i summoned the stronger determination to show her a perfectly cheerful and what is more trot � said my aunt yes of david i think is going to be married god bless her said i cheerfully god bless her said my aunt and her husband too i echoed it parted from my aunt went lightly down stairs mounted and rode away there was greater reason than before to do what i had resolved to do how well i recollect the wintry ride the frozen of ice brushed from the blades of gi 