Friday 11th September, 1868
Spent the morning hunting for a trimming for my dress among the rose and ivy bushes, for I am quite resolved to look my very best for Mr Morland Hutton’s edification and discomfiture. I was amply repaid however for this expenditure of time and trouble by his start of admiration when I entered the drawing room, purposely late, just before dinner. There was a murmer of universal admiration, during which our eyes met. I being adept at reading their language gave him a proudly slightly conscious smile-the projected conquest is certain.
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We danced as usual during the evening, but somehow or other, after the two first valses, I found myself seated alone in the cedar room with him where of course we neither of us had the smallest business to be.
He didn’t say much, compliments not being at all in his line, but he looked! – as I should strongly object to anyone looking at my wife if I was a man and had the misfortune to possess such an article, or to anyone looking at me if I was not quite sure of myself, which I am. But even then it gave me a strange sensation not wholly unpleasant, and it passed through my head if this is the way people fall in love, I should think the process a delightful one. Such ideas though being strictly unlawful and at utter variance with my principles, I dismissed them at once.
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