from her lover for the better part of two years. Perhaps, Mary Shelley writes with
her tongue in her cheek, wishing to stress the strange air of unreality that has become
habitual by now with Victor. His idea of "perfect confidence," after all, is to let
on that he has a "dreadful" secret and then to require that Elizabeth not ask him
a word about it. The irony is lost on him, though one assumes not on the reader. Unfortunately
for Elizabeth, she, indeed, never questions him about his odd revelation.