It was not doubt of her,but of himself,and fear that his great passion made him blind;for he was the one man chivalrous enough to remember how young she was,and to see the cruelty of the Fate which had given her unmothered childhood into the hands of a coarse rioter and debauchee,making her his plaything and his whim.And if in her first hours of bloom she had been thrown with youthful manhood and beauty,what more in the course of nature than that she should have learned to love;and being separated from her young lover by their mutual youthful faults of pride and passionateness of temper,what more natural than,being free again,and he suing with all his soul,that her heart should return to him,even though through a struggle with pride.In her lord's lifetime he had not seen Oxon near her;and in those days when he had so struggled with his own surging love,and striven to bear himself nobly,he had kept away from her,knowing that his passion was too great and strong for any man to always hold at bay and make no sign,because at brief instants he trembled before the thought that in her eyes he had seen that which would have sprung to answer the same self in him if she had been a free woman.But now when,despite her coldness,which never melted to John Oxon,she still turned pale and seemed to fall under a restraint on his coming,a man of sufficient high dignity to be splendidly modest where his own merit was concerned,might well feel that for this there must be a reason,and it might be a grave one.
So though he would not give up his suit until he was sure that 'twas either useless or unfair,he did not press it as he would have done,but saw his lady when he could,and watched with all the tenderness of passion her lovely face and eyes.But one short town season passed before he won his prize;but to poor Anne it seemed that in its passing she lived years.
Poor woman,as she had grown thin and large-eyed in those days gone by,she grew so again.Time in passing had taught her so much that others did not know;and as she served her sister,and waited on her wishes,she saw that of which no other dreamed,and saw without daring to speak,or show by any sign,her knowledge.
The day when Lady Dunstanwolde had turned from standing among her daffodils,and had found herself confronting the open door of her saloon,and John Oxon passing through it,Mistress Anne had seen that in her face and his which had given to her a shock of terror.
In John Oxon's blue eyes there had been a set fierce look,and in Clorinda's a blaze which had been like a declaration of war;and these same looks she had seen since that day,again and again.
Gradually it had become her sister's habit to take Anne with her into the world as she had not done before her widowhood,and Anne knew whence this custom came.There were times when,by use of her presence,she could avoid those she wished to thrust aside,and Anne noted,with a cold sinking of the spirit,that the one she would plan to elude most frequently was Sir John Oxon;and this was not done easily.The young man's gay lightness of demeanour had changed.The few years that had passed since he had come to pay his courts to the young beauty in male attire,had brought experiences to him which had been bitter enough.He had squandered his fortune,and failed to reinstate himself by marriage;his dissipations had told upon him,and he had lost his spirit and good-humour;his mocking wit had gained a bitterness;his gallantry had no longer the gaiety of youth.And the woman he had loved for an hour with youthful passion,and had dared to dream of casting aside in boyish insolence,had risen like a phoenix,and soared high and triumphant to the very sun itself."He was ever base,"Clorinda had said."As he was at first he is now,"and in the saying there was truth.If she had been helpless and heartbroken,and had pined for him,he would have treated her as a victim,and disdained her humiliation and grief;magnificent,powerful,rich,in fullest beauty,and disdaining himself,she filled him with a mad passion of love which was strangely mixed with hatred and cruelty.To see her surrounded by her worshippers,courted by the Court itself,all eyes drawn towards her as she moved,all hearts laid at her feet,was torture to him.In such cases as his and hers,it was the woman who should sue for love's return,and watch the averted face,longing for the moment when it would deign to turn and she could catch the cold eye and plead piteously with her own.This he had seen;this,men like himself,but older,had taught him with vicious art;but here was a woman who had scorned him at the hour which should have been the moment of his greatest powerfulness,who had mocked at and lashed him in the face with the high derision of a creature above law,and who never for one instant had bent her neck to the yoke which women must bear.She had laughed it to scorn--and him--and all things--and gone on her way,crowned with her scarlet roses,to wealth,and rank,and power,and adulation;while he--the man,whose right it was to be transgressor--had fallen upon hard fortune,and was losing step by step all she had won.In his way he loved her madly--as he had loved her before,and as he would have loved any woman who embodied triumph and beauty;and burning with desire for both,and with jealous rage of all,he swore he would not be outdone,befooled,cast aside,and trampled on.
