The very circumstance that it was stalking abroad in the world,
and might reappear at any moment, made her a coward: she trembled
away from contemplating what the reality had been; only, she
clung more faithfully than before to the thought of the great
God, who was a rock in the dreary land, where no shadow was.
Autumn and winter, with their lowering skies, were less dreary
than the woeful, desolate feelings that shed a gloom on Jemima.
She found too late that she had considered Mr. Farquhar so
securely her own for so long a time, that her heart refused to
recognize him as lost to her, unless her reason went through the
same weary, convincing, miserable evidence day after day, and
hour after hour. He never spoke to her now, except from common
civility. He never cared for her contradictions; he never tried,
with patient perseverance, to bring her over to his opinions; he
never used the wonted wiles (so tenderly remembered now they had
no existence but in memory) to bring her round out of some wilful
mood--and such moods were common enough now! Frequently she was
sullenly indifferent to the feelings of others--not from any
unkindness, but because her heart seemed numb and stony, and
incapable of sympathy. Then afterwards her self-reproach was
terrible--in the dead of night when no one saw it. With a strange
perversity, the only intelligence she cared to hear, the only
sights she cared to see, were the circumstances which gave
confirmation to the idea that Mr.
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