Her father had cast doubts upon the innocence of my
friendship; and these, it was my first business to allay. But
there is a kind of an excuse for Catriona also. We had shared in a
scene of some tenderness and passion, and given and received
caresses: I had thrust her from me with violence; I had called
aloud upon her in the night from the one room to the other; she had
passed hours of wakefulness and weeping; and it is not to be
supposed I had been absent from her pillow thoughts. Upon the back
of this, to be awaked, with unaccustomed formality, under the name
of Miss Drummond, and to be thenceforth used with a great deal of
distance and respect, led her entirely in error on my private
sentiments; and she was indeed so incredibly abused as to imagine
me repentant and trying to draw off!
The trouble betwixt us seems to have been this: that whereas I
(since I had first set eyes on his great hat) thought singly of
James More, his return and suspicions, she made so little of these
that I may say she scarce remarked them, and all her troubles and
doings regarded what had passed between us in the night before.
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