The ride home was a painful contrast to the setting out; at least for the two lovers. The rest were as gay and chatty as before; the horses pranced, and shook their heads; Shot leaped up at Jessy's nose, and the sedater hound trotted calmly behind. The ring of laughter, the clatter of hoofs, and the barking of Shot, only made Cecil more conscious of the change. He rode on in sullen silence. Violet had taken her mother's place in the carriage, not feeling quite recovered: her mother mounted Jessy.
It would fill a volume to tell all that passed in the minds of Violet and Cecil during that ride. Her thoughts were all thoughts of unutterable scorn; his thoughts were of overwhelming humiliation. There was an oppressive, moody, suffocating sense of remorse and rage weighing down his spirits. He cursed himself for that unreflecting action as deeply, perhaps more deeply, than if he had murdered a man. In his impotent rage, he asked himself how it was that he had so utterly forgotten her to think solely of himself; and cursed his ill fortune that had placed the fence so close to him. Had it been only half a dozen paces removed, he should have thought of her before reaching it, and then he could have been spared this galling shame.
Violet tried to find excuses for him, but could not. As he rode past, rapt in gloomy thought, crest-fallen, shame-stricken, she wondered that she had ever thought him handsome. The scales had fallen from her eyes.
Who has not experienced some such revulsion of feeling? Who has not looked with astonishment upon some delusion, and asked himself, "Was it, then, really so? Was this the person I believed so great and good?" Alas! no; not this, but another. It was your ideal that you loved, and mistook for the reality. Seen in the bright colours of your fancy, that man appeared admirable whom now you see to be contemptible.
The other day I took up a common pebble from the shore; washed by the advancing waves, and glittering in the summer sun, it looked like a gem. I carried it home; arrived there, I took it from my pocket: the pebble was dry, its splendour had vanished, and I held it for what it was—a pebble.
Such is life, with and without its illusions.
CHAPTER V.
A TRAIT OF JULIUS ST. JOHN.
As Cecil was dressing for dinner that day, he asked himself whether he really loved Violet; the answer was a decided negative. He had loved her till that afternoon: but that one fatal incident as completely turned his love into dislike, as it had turned Violet's into scorn. He disliked her, as we dislike those who have humiliated us, or who have witnessed some action which we know must appear contemptible in their eyes, but which we feel is not really so contemptible. He resented her superior courage; called her coarse and unwomanly, reckless and cruel. He remembered her beating Shot on the morning of their first interview, and it now seemed to him, as then, an act of wanton severity. He remembered what her father and mother said of her temper. They were right; she was a devil!
He went down to dinner quite satisfied that she was not at all the woman he should choose.