“Hazel Thorne is refined, sensitive, perfectly ladylike to my mind, very sweet—very beautiful with those soft appealing eyes, and that rather care-worn, troubled look; she is evidently a true woman, and one who would devote herself thoroughly to the man who won her heart. If I could win her I believe she would think more of me than of her dresses and jewellery, horses and carriages, and consider that her sole aim in life was to make me happy—if I could win her.”
He sat with his eyes half-closed for a time.
“No, I don’t believe that,” he said aloud. “I don’t believe that she would accept me for the sake of my position. I believe from my heart that she would refuse me, and if she does—well, I shall try.”
There was another long pause, during which the thought-weaving went on, with the face of Hazel Thorne ever in the pattern; and at last as if perfectly satisfied in his own mind, he rose and sighed, saying:
“Yes; there’s no doubt about it: I am what people call ‘in love.’”
He went to the window and stood leaning against the side, gazing out at the pleasant park-like expanse, but seeing nothing but the face of Hazel Thorne, as in a quiet, dreamy way he recalled the past.
Suddenly a pang shot through him, and his brow grew rugged, for he remembered a conversation he had heard between Beatrice Lambent and his mother, wherein the former had said, à propos of the new mistress, that the vicar had been rather displeased with her for receiving the visit of some gentleman friend so soon after she had come down.
“I shall hate that woman before I have done,” he said angrily, and, crossing the room, he rang the bell sharply and ordered his horse.
George Canninge’s was no calf-love. He was a sterling, thoughtful man, quietly preparing himself to make his position in his country’s legislature; and yet the coming of Hazel Thorne had changed the whole course of his life. He found himself longing to see her, eager to meet and speak, but bound by his sense of gentle deference towards the woman who occupied so high a position in his esteem to avoid doing anything likely to call forth remark to her disparagement.
George Canninge mounted and rode off, leaving the care of his body to his horse, and for the next three hours he was in a kind of dream. He rode right away out into the country, and then returned, to come back to himself suddenly, for there, the living embodiment of his thoughts, was Hazel Thorne coming towards him, and in an instant all the determinations that he had made vanished into space.