For two weeks Bressant had done his studying and thinking in this room.
He had enormous powers of application, naturally and by acquisition, and
the first fortnight had seen them exerted to their full extent. This
diligence, however, was practised not so much because the course of
study marked out necessitated it, as by way of voluntary
self-discipline. His first evening's experience in the Parsonage garden
had given the young man a serious shock; a disturbing influence had
obtained possession of him, of which he could understand no more than
that it appeared to have some connection with Cornelia. It interfered,
at unexpected moments, with his processes of thought; it distracted his
schemes of argument; it wrote itself unintelligibly upon the page he was
reading. It even followed him in his rough tramps up the hills and
through the woods, and sometimes shook the hand which held the pen
during his compositions.
Bressant knew not how best to combat his novel difficulty. Although
called into existence by an extraneous circumstance, it seemed to have
struck root in every faculty of his mind, and, what was more, into the
inmost core of every faculty. He was possessed, not by seven devils, but
by one devil in seven different forms.
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