Addle appeared engrossed with the attentions of others, and Harcourt not in the least jealous or annoyed. In brief, they acted like cousins, and not in the least like lovers.
But in the sensitive delicacy of her character she would not permit her mind to dwell on the problem of their relations, and bent all her thoughts upon her effort to win Harcourt to a better life.
And she had moved him that evening more deeply than she could know. Neither she, nor any finite power, could plant righteous principle within his soul and transform his character; but she had created, for the time at least, an utter distaste for all low and sensual pleasures, and an honest and absorbing wish to become a true, good man. He felt that he could not, in her society, and breathing the pure atmosphere of her life, be his old self.
Never did a man return from a fashionable revel in a more serious and thoughtful mood, and equally with Lottie and Hemstead he was glad to escape, from the trifling chat and gossip of Addie and Bel Parton, to the solitude of his own loom.
CHAPTER XVIII.
HEMSTEAD'S HEAVY GUN AND ITS RECOIL.
The "day after the ball" has its proverbial character, and Saturday was so long and dismal to several of the revellers that it occurred to them that their pleasure had been purchased rather dearly. It seemed an odd coincidence, that those who had been bent on securing all the pleasure possible, with no other thought, suffered the most. Bel and Addie could scarcely endure their own company, they were so weary and stupid; and they yawned through the day, irritable and dishevelled, for it was too stormy for callers.
De Forrest did not appear until dinner, and then came down moody and taciturn. The young ladies had heard of his illness the evening before, with significant glances. Mrs. Marchmont partly surmised the truth, but politely ignored the matter, treating it only as a sudden indisposition; and so the affair was passed over, as such matters usually are in fashionable life until they reach a stage too pronounced for polite blindness.
De Forrest but dimly recollected the events of the preceding evening. He was quite certain, however, that he had been drunk, and had made a fool of himself.
Though his conscience was not over tender upon this subject, and though such occurrences were not so exceedingly rare in fashionable life as to be very shocking, he still had the training and instinct of a gentleman, to a sufficient degree to feel deep mortification.