It was a summer
afternoon. The sun had outflanked the thick clouds of leaves that
rendered the woods impregnable from overhead, and was now shining in, a
little sideways, with that slumberous light belonging to summer
afternoons, in which everything, mind and all, seems half asleep and all
dreaming.
"'Let me carry the jug,' I said.
"'No,' she answered, with a light laugh; 'you would be sure to spill the
cream, and spoil both your coat and mamma's tea.'
"'Then put it down in this hollow till we come back.'
"'It would be full of flies and beetles in a moment. Besides we won't
come back this way, shall we? I can carry it quite well. Gentlemen don't
like carrying things.'
"I feared lest the tone the conversation had assumed, might lead me away
from the resolution I had formed while kneeling in the lane. So, as
usual with me, I rushed blindly on the performance.
"'Miss Lizzie, I am a hypocritical and unhappy wretch.'
"She looked up at me with a face full of compassionate sympathy. I could
have lost myself in that gaze. But I would not be turned from my
purpose, of which she had no design, though her look had almost the
power; and, the floodgates of speech once opened, out it came, the whole
confession I have made to you, in what form or manner, I found, the very
first time I looked back upon the relation, that I had quite forgotten.
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