"She is probably engaged, but is ceasing to love him," he thought. "She never could have respected him, and now he has forfeited whatever affection she may have had. Still she feels that she is chained to him, and must endure the life-long martyrdom of an ill-mated marriage"; and his heart overflowed with a great pity.
It did not occur to him that he was a miracle of disinterestedness when Lottie was concerned; and that her troubles moved him more than the woes of all the world beside. Like many another life-voyager, with hand upon the helm, he thought that he was directing his course, when in feet a strong and subtile current was sweeping him he not whither.
He and Lottie did not have much to say to each but their eyes often met, and at times, in his frank impulsiveness, he looked at her so earnestly and sympathetically that she turned away to hide her heightened color. She was becoming conscious, with a secret wonder, that he, as no man ever before, had the power to cause her blood to ebb and flow in the most unaccountable manner.
A short time after their arrival he wandered over to the side of the chapel where Miss Martell was working, and she seemingly fascinated him. They apparently became so absorbed in each other's words as to think of no one else, and Lottie grew pale and quiet, feeling, in the mean time, an unreasonable resentment towards Miss Martell. If Lottie has received a little grace, she is, and ever will be, the natural possessor of abundance of human nature. Is this pale and silent girl the one whose cheeks, a little before, were aflame, and every nerve tingling with the most unwonted sensations, and for no better reason apparently than that Hemstead had seen her tugging at a fibrous spray of hemlock, and had severed it with his knife? That was all the others had seen; but there was a great deal more, for in the act their hands had touched, and both had seemed in a positive state in the power to give, and in the negative in readiness to receive, a subtile influence, compared with which electricity is a slow and material agent. And he had lifted his large gray eyes to hers full of—he did not realize what, nor did she—but the cause was there, and the effect followed.
But now, with secret uneasiness, Lottie notes that he seems oblivious of her in his eager talk with Miss Martell.
Soon after joining the latter, Hemstead had said, in his straightforward manner, "You intimated to Mr. Harcourt yesterday that you were 'sorry he heard my sermon.'"
With a little embarrassment she replied, "I do not think that Mr. Harcourt was in the right condition of mind to be benefited by your line of thought."
"Do you think that any one could be benefited by it?"
She was a little puzzled. Was he, like some young clergy-men she had known, eager for a few crumbs of praise for his first crude efforts? She was not one to give any faint and hollow commendation, and yet she did not wish to hurt his feelings. But her reply had a tinge of satire in it, for she had no patience with the weakness of vanity.
"I will hardly venture an opinion. You, who have given so much time and thought to these subjects, ought to be a better judge than I."