Colonel Dacre sat back firmly in his chair, and covered his eyes. But when the door opened he glanced up mechanically, and there stood the man he had sworn not to look upon for his soul’s sake.
The other drew back at once, with a hurried apology for his mistake, and a courteous bow; but Colonel Dacre knew that wherever they might meet he should recognize him again, and that the cool, proud face, with its insolent beauty, would be from henceforth imprinted on his brain.
CHAPTER V.
WOMAN’S WAYS.
Of course it is very comfortable to be a philosopher. When people have once succeeded in persuading themselves that it is as easy to reason as to feel, it is wonderful how smoothly life ends.
As Colonel Dacre sat in the little inn parlor that night, he tried hard to attain that enviable state of mind, and to be able to say, with a shrug of the shoulder:
“If she be not fair for me,
What care I how fair she be.”
But it would not do. He did care, and so much, that he could have dashed his head against the wall for very rage and misery.
But there was one thing he could not understand, and that was why Lady Teignmouth took so much interest in seeing him disenchanted. She must have sent him to Turoy, knowing quite well whom he would meet there, and enjoying the thought of his pain. It was strange to find a young and handsome woman so cruel—and he had never harmed her—that she should take pleasure in dealing him such a blow. But for some reason she was his enemy; and as he began to divine how utterly unscrupulous she was, the idea was not an agreeable one, by any means.