Lucilla's Journal, continued _September_ 1st.
I AM composed enough to return to my Journal, and to let my mind dwell a little on all that I have thought and felt since Oscar has been here.
Now that I have lost Madame Pratolungo, I have no friend with whom I can talk over my little secrets. My aunt is all that is kind and good to me; but with a person so much older than I am--who has lived in such a different world from my world, and whose ideas seem to be so far away from mine--how can I talk about my follies and extravagances, and expect sympathy in return! My one confidential friend is my Journal--I can only talk about myself to myself, in these pages. My position feels sometimes like a very lonely one. I saw two girls telling all their secrets to each other on the sands to-day--and I am afraid I envied them.
Well, my dear Journal, how did I feel--after longing for Oscar--when Oscar came to me? It is dreadful to own it; but my book locks up, and my book can be trusted with the truth. I felt ready to cry--I was so unexpectedly, so horribly, disappointed.
No. "Disappointed" is not the word. I can't find the word. There was a moment--I hardly dare write it: it seems so atrociously wicked--there was a moment when I actually wished myself blind again.
He took me in his arms; he held my hand in his. In the time when I was blind, how I should have felt it! how the delicious _tingle_ would have run through me when he touched me! Nothing of the kind happened now. He might have been Oscar's brother for all the effect he produced on me. I have myself taken his hand since, and shut my eyes to try and renew my blindness, and put myself back completely as I was in the old time. The same result still. Nothing, nothing, nothing!
Is it that he is a little restrained with me on his side? He certainly is! I felt it the moment he came into the room--I have felt it ever since.
No: it is not that. In the old time, when we were only beginning to love each other, he was restrained with me. But it made no difference then. I was not the insensible creature in those days that I have become since.