And if this beautiful woman were indeed Aspatria, how could he reconcile the fact with her education at St. Alban’s, her friendship with such exalted families, her relationship to an officer of evident birth and position? When he thought thus, he acknowledged the impossibility; but then no sooner had he acknowledged it than his heart passionately denied the deduction, with the simple iteration, “It is Aspatria! It is Aspatria!”
Aspatria or not, he told himself that he was at last genuinely in love. Every affair before was tame, pale, uninteresting. If it was not Aspatria, then the first Aspatria was the shadow of the second and real one; the preface to love’s glorious tale; the prelude to his song; the gray, sweet dawn to his perfect day. He could not eat, nor sit still, nor think reasonably, nor yet stop thinking. The sun stood still; the minutes were hours; at four o’clock he wished to fling the timepiece out of the window.
Aspatria had the immense strength of certainty. She knew. Also, she had Sarah to advise with. Still better, she had the conviction that Ulfar loved her. Perhaps Sarah had exaggerated Ulfar’s desperate condition; if so, she had done it consciously, for she knew that as soon as a woman is sure of her power she puts on an authority which commands it. She was now only afraid that Ulfar would not be kept in suspense long enough, that Aspatria would forgive him too easily.
“Do make yourself as puzzling as you can, for this one night, Aspatria,” she urged. “Try to outvie and outdo and even affront that dove-like simplicity he used to adore in you, and into which you are still apt to relapse. He told me once that you looked like a Quakeress when he first saw you.”
“I was just home from Miss Gilpin’s school in Kendal. It was a Quaker school. I have always kept a black gown ready, like the one he saw me first in.”
“No black gown to-night. I have a mind to stay here and see that you turn the Quakeress into a princess.”
“I will do all you wish. To-night you shall have your way; but poor Ulfar must have suffered, and—”
“Poor Ulfar, indeed! Be merry; that is the best armour against love. What ruins women? Revery and sentimentality. A woman who does not laugh ought to be watched.”