On that day Woodward exerted himself to the utmost, with
a hope of making a favorable impression upon her. He calculated a good
deal upon her isolated position and necessary ignorance of life and the
world, and in doing so, he calculated, as thousands of self-sufficient
libertines, in their estimate of women, have done both before and since.
He did not know that there is an intuitive spirit in the female heart
which often enables it to discover the true character of the opposite
sex; and to discriminate between the real and the assumed with almost
infallible accuracy. But, independently of this, there was in Woodward's
manner a hardness of outline, and in his conversation an unconscious
absence of all reality and truth, together with a cold, studied
formality, dry, sharp, and presumptuous, that required no extraordinary
penetration to discover; for the worst of it was, that he made himself
disagreeably felt, and excited those powers of scrutiny and analysis
that are so peculiar to the generality of the other sex. In fact, he
sought his way home in anything but an agreeable mood.
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