Denial and Defeat

My sleep that night was anything but satisfactory. I had feverish
dreams, unquiet slumbers, and woke at morning with an excruciating
headache. I was in no mood for an explanation such as my promise
necessarily implied, but I prepared my toilet with particular
care--spent two hours at my office in a vain endeavor to divert
myself, by a resort to business, from the conflicting and annoying
sensations which afflicted me, and then proceeded to the dwelling
of my uncle.

I was fortunate in seeing Julia without the presence of her mother.
That good lady had become too fashionable to suffer herself to
be seen at so early an hour. Her vanity, in this respect, baffled
her vigilance, for she had her own apprehensions on the score of
my influence upon her daughter. Julia was scarcely so composed in
the morning as she had appeared on the preceding night. I was now
fully conscious of a flutter in her manner, a flush upon her face,
an ill-suppressed apprehension in her eyes, which betokened strong
emotions actively at work. But my own agitation did not suffer
me to know the full extent of hers. For the first time, on her
appearance, did I ask myself the question--"For what did I seek
this interview?" What had I to say--what near? How explain my
conduct--my coldness? On what imaginary and unsubstantial premises
base the neglect in my deportment, amounting to rudeness, of which
she had sufficient reason and a just right to complain? When I
came to review my causes of vexation, how trivial did they seem. The
reserve which had irritated me, on her part, now that I analyzed its
sources, seemed a very natural reserve, such as was only maidenly
and becoming. I now recollected that she was no longer a child--no
longer the lively little fairy whom I could dandle on my knee and
fling upon my shoulder, without a scruple or complaint. I stood like
a trembling culprit in her presence. I was eloquent only through
the force of a stricken conscience.