But he recalled that visit when she had chatted in a distant window-seat with Stamford, not noticing him, while he took in to tea a garrulous Miss Banks, and the despair which is always waiting for the true lover because he thinks himself unworthy, gripped poor Andy’s vitals.
Of course she would never look at him.
Still—she had looked: she had done more, she had let him touch her arm as they stood close together, laughing, in Mrs. Petch’s kitchen.
He groaned—the contrast between that exquisite moment and this was too great to bear.
All the pleasant certainty which had undoubtedly lurked at the bottom of Andy’s mind, fostered by the opinion he had unconsciously gained during his London curacy that men were rather rare birds, and all women pleased to catch them, was swept away from him.
She wouldn’t have him. She would never have him. Elizabeth!
If he could only go and ask her, and so make sure——
But he couldn’t.
The gates of Andy’s soul clashed to on such a temptation with a vibration that roused him from his despair: but the sight of the spacious wall on which his shadow flickered brought back the memory of that other blow, which in the first agony of love’s suspense he had forgotten.
He owed all this, then, to the fact that Mr. Stamford needed a companion for his son—a young fellow who should not be too old or too clever to disdain such companionship.