He was not unconscious that his attempts were highly criminal: he saw clearly the baseness of seducing the innocent girl: but his passion was too violent to permit his abandoning his design. He resolved to pursue it, let the consequences be what they might. He depended upon finding Antonia in some unguarded moment; and seeing no other man admitted into her society, nor hearing any mentioned either by her or by Elvira, he imagined that her young heart was still unoccupied. While he waited for the opportunity of satisfying his unwarrantable lust, every day increased his coldness for Matilda. Not a little was this occasioned by the consciousness of his faults to her. To hide them from her he was not sufficiently master of himself: yet he dreaded lest, in a transport of jealous rage, she should betray the secret on which his character and even his life depended. Matilda could not but remark his indifference: he was conscious that she remarked it, and fearing her reproaches, shunned her studiously. Yet when he could not avoid her, her mildness might have convinced him that he had nothing to dread from her resentment.