Having found that,in a case of your own experience,a so-called goose was a swan,it seems absurd to deny such a possibility in other mens experiences.
You can hit palpably,cousin Charlotte,said Knight.You are like the boy who puts a stone inside his snowball,and I shall play with you no longer.Excuse me--I am going for my evening stroll.
Though Knight had spoken jestingly,this incident and conversation had caused him a sudden depression.Coming,rather singularly,just after his discovery that Elfride had known what it was to love warmly before she had known him,his mind dwelt upon the subject,and the familiar pipe he smoked,whilst pacing up and down the shrubbery-path,failed to be a solace.He thought again of those idle words--hitherto quite forgotten--about the first kiss of a girl,and the theory seemed more than reasonable.Of course their sting now lay in their bearing on Elfride.
Elfride,under Knights kiss,had certainly been a very different woman from herself under Stephens.Whether for good or for ill,she had marvellously well learnt a betrothed ladys part;and the fascinating finish of her deportment in this second campaign did probably arise from her unreserved encouragement of Stephen.
Knight,with all the rapidity of jealous sensitiveness,pounced upon some words she had inadvertently let fall about an earring,which he had only partially understood at the time.It was during that initial kissby the little waterfall:
We must be careful.I lost the other by doing this!
A flush which had in it as much of wounded pride as of sorrow,passed over Knight as he thought of what he had so frequently said to her in his simplicity.I always meant to be the first comer in a womans heart,fresh lips or none for me.How childishly blind he must have seemed to this mere girl!How she must have laughed at him inwardly!He absolutely writhed as he thought of the confession she had wrung from him on the boat in the darkness of night.The one conception which had sustained his dignity when drawn out of his shell on that occasion--that of her charming ignorance of all such matters--how absurd it was!
This man,whose imagination had been fed up to preternatural size by lonely study and silent observations of his kind--whose emotions had been drawn out long and delicate by his seclusion,like plants in a cellar--was now absolutely in pain.Moreover,several years of poetic study,and,if the truth must be told,poetic efforts,had tended to develop the affective side of his constitution still further,in proportion to his active faculties.
It was his belief in the absolute newness of blandishment to Elfride which had constituted her primary charm.He began to think it was as hard to be earliest in a womans heart as it was to be first in the Pool of Bethesda.
That Knight should have been thus constituted:that Elfrides second lover should not have been one of the great mass of bustling mankind,little given to introspection,whose good-nature might have compensated for any lack of appreciativeness,was the chance of things.That her throbbing,self-confounding,indiscreet heart should have to defend itself unaided against the keen scrutiny and logical power which Knight,now that his suspicions were awakened,would sooner or later be sure to exercise against her,was her misfortune.A miserable incongruity was apparent in the circumstance of a strong mind practising its unerring archery upon a heart which the owner of that mind loved better than his own.
Elfrides docile devotion to Knight was now its own enemy.
Clinging to him so dependently,she taught him in time to presume upon that devotion--a lesson men are not slow to learn.A slight rebelliousness occasionally would have done him no harm,and would have been a world of advantage to her.But she idolized him,and was proud to be his bond-servant.
