"
"They would ch---I should like it if it were not so like two men
in one, the one holding the other back."
Harriet laughed at this fancy, and Aurelia was impelled to defend it.
"Indeed, Harriet, it is really so. There will be whispers--oh, such
whispers!"--she sunk her voice and hid her face again--"close to my
ear, and--endearments--while the grave voice sounds at the other end
of the room, and then I long for light. I swooned for fright the
first time, but I am much more used to it now."
"This is serious," said Harriet, with unwonted gravity. "Do you
really think that there is another person in the room?"
"I do not feel as if it could be otherwise, and yet it is quite
impossible."
"I would not bear it," said her sister. "You ought not to bear it.
How do you know that it is not some vile stratagem? It might even
be the blackamoor!"
"No, no, Harriet! I know better than that. It is quite impossible.
Besides, I am sure of this--that the hands that wedded me are the
same hands that caress me," she added, with another blushing effort,
"strong but delicate hands, rather hard inside, as with the bridle.
I noticed it because once I thought his hands soft with doing nothing
and being shut up."
"That convinces me the more, then, there is some strange imposition
practised upon you," said Harriet, anxiously.
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