“You’ll drive me mad with your coolness. You can’t care for her. Oh, Glen, ’pon my soul, it’s too bad! I loved Clotilde almost to distraction, but seeing how you seemed to be taken with her, I gave her up to the man I looked upon more as brother than friend, and devoted myself to Marie. If I had known, though, I should have taken up very different ground.”
Glen had felt troubled at his little companion’s remarks, and he had begun to think seriously of the possibility of what he had announced being true; but the tragic manner in which he had spoken of the transfer of his affections in obedience to his friendship was more than Glen could bear, and he burst out into such a hearty fit of laughter that little Richard faced round, and marched pompously and indignantly out of the room.
No sooner had he gone than Glen began to think, and very seriously now. Somehow he seemed to have been stirred by Clotilde from the depths of his ordinary calm life; he did not know that he loved her, but the thought of her dark, passionate eyes had such an effect upon him that he got up and began to pace the room. Never had woman so moved him from his apathy before; and the more he thought of her simplicity and daring combined, the more he told himself that this woman was his fate.
It was plain enough to him, with his knowledge of the world, that he was the first who had ever intruded upon her maiden repose. He knew that she had led an almost conventual life, and that her young heart seemed, as it were, to leap to meet him, so that what would have appeared brazen effrontery in a girl of several seasons, was in her but the natural act of her newly-awakened love.
“I can’t help it,” he exclaimed at last; “she is not the sort of girl that I thought I should have chosen to call wife; but she is all that is innocent and passionate, and, well, I feel sure she loves me, and if she does—”
He stopped short for a few moments, thinking:
“We shall be as poor as the proverbial church mouse; but what does that matter, so long as a man finds a wealth of love?”
He continued his two or three strides backwards and forwards, and then threw himself down in his seat.
“The girl’s a syren,” he exclaimed, “and she has bewitched me. Hang me if I ever thought I could feel such a fool!”
Glen’s folly, as he considered it, increased in intensity like a fever. For years past he had trifled with the complaint—rather laughed at it, in fact; but now he had it badly, and, with the customary unreason of men in his condition, he saw nothing but perfection in the lady who had made his pulses throb.