I do so because it will secure our mutual safety. From that hour I shall be implicitly guided by you."
I should have been glad to have adopted a different course, and to have claimed her openly. My pride, wounded by the insolent denunciations of the dwarf, demanded a more public vindication of her independence and mine; and this stolen flight, and the necessity it imposed upon me of observing a similar caution in my own movements, looked so like fear and evasion that I submitted to it very reluctantly. The notion of concealment and secrecy galled me, and even at this moment, when my happiness was on the eve of consummation, it gave me a thrill of uneasiness that cast an oppressive shadow over the future. Astræa, however, had evidently a strong reason for insisting on privacy, and I was too anxious about hastening our union to throw any new obstacle in the way of its accomplishment.
We separated in the Park, Astræa being unwilling to suffer me to escort her any further lest we should be seen together. This little incident, trifling as it was, increased the nervous annoyance and sense of humiliation I felt at being required to act as if I had any fear of the results; nor could I comprehend why she should be so much alarmed at being seen walking with me alone, when she knew that in a few days we should be indissolubly united. But I submitted to her wishes. Passion is willful and unreasonable, and takes a wayward pleasure in shutting its eyes, and rushing onward in the dare. I stifled my vexation in the anticipation of the joy that lay before me, which would be victory enough over the impotent hatred of Mephistophiles.
VIII
Throughout the whole of the next day I waited anxiously in the expectation of hearing from Astræa. Evening came and passed, and there was no communication. When the last post-hour was gone by, and all hope of a letter was at an end, I ventured into the streets, hoping to gather some signs of her movements from the outside of her house. The blinds were down as usual in the drawing-room windows, and there seemed to be rather an extraordinary flush of lights within, as if some commotion was going forward. I could see huge, shapeless shadows of people moving about the room, in great bustle and excitement; and it appeared to me, from the frequency and confusion of then: motions, that the ordinary family party was augmented by additional numbers. The gathering, whatever it might have been, was not for festivity; and the constant swaying backward and forward, and vehement tossing of long streaks of heads and arms on the blinds, resembled the action of a violent domestic scene, in which the angry passions were strenuously engaged. I hardly knew what to conclude from this incoherent pantomime. Either Astræa was there, in the midst of a stormy contention; or she had left the house, and they were disputing furiously over the causes of her departure.
After I had been some time watching this unintelligible phantasmagoria, and vainly endeavoring to collect a meaning for it, the hall-door opened, and in the momentary gleam of light that shot into the street I saw the dwarf issuing out, muffled to the ears in a cloak. He stood for a moment on the pavement, and adjusting his cloak more carefully about his face, and crushing his hat down over his eyes, he set off at a quick pace in an opposite direction to that part of the street where I was standing. I confess I felt ashamed of the espionage in which I was occupied, and although I followed my mercurial fiend at a safe distance, for the distinct purpose of earthing him wherever he was going, I by no means liked the office which a sort of fatality had forced upon me. But I was somewhat reconciled to it by a secret conviction that the abominable little demon had himself come out upon an equally discreditable expedition, which I soon detected from the infinite pains he took to elude observation.
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