He had now returned to his
country to find almost every one of his old friends dead, or so changed
as to make them all but dead to him. Little as any one would have
imagined it from his conversation or manner, it was with a kind of
heart-despair that he sought the cousin he had loved. And scarcely had
he more than seen the daughter of his old love than, in the absence of
almost all other personal interest, he was immediately taken possession
of by her--saw at once that she was a grand sort of creature, gracious
as grand, and different from anything he had even seen before. At the
same time he unconsciously began to claim a property in her; to have
loved the mother seemed to give him a right in the daughter, and that
right there might be a way of making good. But all this was as yet only
in the region of the feeling, not at all in that of the thinking.
In proportion as he was taken with the daughter of the house, he
disliked the look of the fine gentleman visitor that seemed to be
dangling after her. Who he was, or in what capacity there, he did not
know, but almost from the first sight profoundly disliked him, and the
more as he saw more sign of his admiration of Hester.
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