“That’s not liking! That is merely the expression of a weak gratitude towards the person who helps to tide over a dreary interval. You might feel it for the old priest who played piquet with you, or the Spitz terrier that accompanied you in your walks.
“Oh, it’s far more than that. She is constantly talking of your great abilities—how you might be this, that and t’other. That, with scarcely an effort, you can master any subject, and without any effort at all always make yourself more agreeable than anyone else.”
“Joseph excepted?”
“No, she didn’t even except him; on the contrary, she said, ‘It was unfortunate for him to be exposed to such a dazzling rivalry—that your animal spirits alone would always beat him out of the field.’”
“Stuff and nonsense! If I wasn’t as much his superior in talent as in temperament, I’d fling myself over that rock yonder, and make an end of it!” After a few seconds’ pause he went on: “She may think what she likes of me, but one thing is plain enough—she does not love him. It is the sort of compassionating, commiserating estimate imaginative girls occasionally get up for dreary depressed fellows, constituting themselves discoverers of intellect that no one ever suspected—revealers of wealth that none had ever dreamed of. Don’t I know scores of such who have poetised the most commonplace of men into heroes, and never found out their mistake till they married them!”
“You always terrify me when you take to predicting, Mr. Calvert”
“Heaven knows, it’s not my ordinary mood. One who looks so little into the future for himself has few temptations to do so for his friends.”
“Why do you feel so depressed?”
“I’m not sure that I do feel depressed. I’m irritable, out of sorts, annoyed if you will; but not low or melancholy. Is it not enough to make one angry to see such a girl as Florry bestow her affections on that—Well, I’ll not abuse him, but you know he is a ‘cad’—that’s exactly the word that fits him.”
“It was no choice of mine,” she sighed.