"Mr. Atwood, what has put all this into your head? This seems very strange language from you."
"It is not so strange as it seems. It comes from the gift on which I base my hope of success in life. I see clearly and vividly what is before me, and draw my conclusions. If I see the antlers of a stag above some bushes, it is not necessary to see the whole animal to know he is there, and what kind of a creature he is. I'm not a scholar, Miss Jocelyn, but you must not think I do not know anything because I work in the corn or the hayfield all day. We have long winters up here, and I've studied some and read a great deal more. There are but few books in the village library that I have not read more or less thoroughly, and some of them many times. Because I was a careless, conceited fellow a few weeks since, it does not follow that I'm an ignoramus."
Mildred was decidedly puzzled. She could not account for the change in him; and she did not like to think of that to which his words and feelings pointed. He asked for friendship, but she strongly doubted whether such a placid regard would long satisfy him. Her chief impulse was to escape, for the bare thought of words of love from him or any one except Vinton Arnold was intensely repugnant. As she glanced around, seeking in what direction she might take her flight, she saw a gentleman coming rapidly toward the house. After a second's hesitation she rushed toward him, crying, "Papa, papa, you are welcome!"
CHAPTER X
A COUNCIL
Roger saw Miss Jocelyn rush into the arms of a tall, florid gentleman, whose dark eyes grew moist at the almost passionate warmth of his daughter's greeting. To Mildred her father's unexpected coming was thrice welcome, for in addition to her peculiarly strong affection for him, his presence ended an interview not at all agreeable, and promised relief from further unwelcome attentions on the part of Roger. Almost in the moment of meeting, she resolved to persuade him that his family would be happier with him in the city. This had been her feeling from the first, but now she was wholly bent on leaving the farm-house; for with her larger experience and womanly intuition she read in Roger's frank and still half-boyish face the foreshadowing of an unwelcome regard which she understood better than he did.
While his manner for a few weeks past, and especially his words during their recent interview, made it clear that he was not the rough, awkward rustic she had first imagined him to be, he still seemed very crude and angular. In spite of her love for Vinton Arnold, which had not abated in the least, he had ceased to be her ideal man. Nevertheless, his refined elegance, his quiet self-restraint, his knowledge of the niceties and proprieties of the world to which she felt she belonged by right, did combine to produce an ideal in her mind of which she was but half conscious, and beside which Roger appeared in a repulsive light. She shrank with instinctive distaste from his very strength and vehemence, and feared that she would never be safe from interviews like the one just described, and from awkward, half-concealed gallantries. Even the flowers he had set out became odious, for they represented a sentiment the very thought of which inspired aversion.
A coquette can soon destroy the strong instinct of sacredness and exclusiveness with which an unperverted girl guards her heart from all save the one who seems to have the divine right and unexplained power to pass all barriers. Even while fancy free, unwelcome advances are resented almost as wrongs and intrusions by the natural woman; but after a real, or even an ideal image has taken possession of the heart and imagination, repugnance is often the sole reward of other unfortunate suitors, and this dislike usually will be felt and manifested in a proportion corresponding with the obtrusiveness of the attentions, their sincerity, and the want of tact with which they are offered.
To that degree, therefore, that Roger was in earnest, Mildred shrank from him, and she feared that he would not—indeed, from his antecedents could not—know how to hide his emotions. His words had so startled her that, in her surprise and annoyance, she imagined him in a condition of semi-ambitious and semi-amative ebullition, and she dreaded to think what strange irruptions might ensue. It would have been the impulse of many to make the immature youth a source of transient amusement, but with a sensitive delicacy she shrank from him altogether, and wished to get away as soon as possible. Pressing upon her was the sad, practical question of a thwarted and impoverished life—impoverished to her in the dreariest sense—and it was intolerable that one who seemed so remote from her sphere should come and ask that, from her bruised and empty heart, she should give all sorts of melodramatic sentiment in response to his crude, ambitious impulses, which were yet as blind as the mythical god himself.
Had she seen that Roger meant friendship only when he asked for friendship, she would not have been so prejudiced against him; but the fact that this "great boy" was half consciously extending his hand for a gift which now she could not bestow on the best and greatest, since it was gone from her beyond recall, appeared grotesque, and such a disagreeable outcome of her changed fortunes that she was almost tempted to hate him. There are some questions on which women scarcely reason—they only feel intensely.