By a single stroke of genius, inspired by the diplomacy inherent in a sex whose chief concern has been the making of matches, she transfixed his imagination as skilfully as she might have impaled a butterfly on a bodkin. While he stared at her she could almost see the iridescent wings of his fancy whirling madly around the idea by which she had arrested their flight. Trifle with Virginia! Trifle with that radiant vision of girlhood! All the chivalry of youth revolted from the suggestion, and he thought again of the wistful adoration in the eyes of a Perugino virgin. Was it possible that she could ever look at him with that angelic expression of weakness and surrender? The fire of first love, which had smouldered under the weight of his reason, burst suddenly into flame. His thoughts, which had been as clear as a geometrical figure, became suddenly blurred by the mystery upon which passion lives. He was seized by a consuming wonder about Virginia, and this wonder was heightened when he remembered the appealing sweetness in her face as she smiled up at him. Did she already love him? Had he conquered by a look the exquisite modesty of her soul? With this thought the memory of her virginal shyness stung his senses as if it were the challenge of sex. Chivalry, love, vanity, curiosity—all these circled helplessly around the invisible axis of Miss Priscilla's idea.
"What do you mean? Surely you don't suppose—she hasn't said anything——"
"You don't imagine that Jinny is the kind of girl who would say anything, do you?" inquired Miss Priscilla.
"But there must be some reason why you should have——"
"If there is, my dear boy, I'm not going to tell it," she answered with a calmness which he felt, in his excited state, to be positively infernal. "All I meant was to warn you not to trifle with any girl as innocent of life as Jinny Pendleton is. I don't want her to get her heart broken before she has the chance to make some man happy."
"Do you honestly mean to imply that I could break her heart if I tried to?"
"I don't mean to imply anything. I am only telling you that she is just the kind of girl a man would want to marry. She is her mother all over again, and I don't believe Lucy has ever thought of herself a minute since she married."
"She looks like an angel," he said, "but——"
"And she isn't a bit the kind of girl that Susan is, though they are so devoted. Now, I can understand a man not wanting to marry Susan, because she is so full of ideas, and has a mind of her own about things. But Jinny is different."
Then, seeing that she had "unsettled" his mind sufficiently for her purpose, she rose and looked around the room with the inordinate curiosity about details which kept her still young in spite of her sixty years.