Seeing a man subject to these petty irritations lowers him in the eyes of woman. For that susceptibility of temper arising from the jealousy of love, even when excited by trifles, woman makes all reasonable, all natural allowance; but for the jealousy of self-love she has no pity. Unsuited to the manly character!—so Helen thought, and so every woman thinks.
CHAPTER XVI.
It was expected by all who had witnessed his discomfiture and his parting push to the chair, that Mr. Churchill would be off early in the morning—such was his wont when he was disturbed in vanity: but he reappeared at breakfast.
This day was a good day with Horace; he determined it should be so, and though it was again a wet day, he now showed that he could rule the weather of his own humour, when intensity of will was wakened by rivalry. He made himself most agreeable, and the man of yesterday was forgotten or remembered only as a foil to the man of to-day. The words he so much loved to hear, and to which he had so often surreptitiously listened, were now repeated, ‘No one can be so agreeable as Horace Churchill is on his good days!’
Bright he shone out, all gaiety and graciousness; the cachet de faveur was for all, but its finest impression was for Helen. He tried flattery, and wit, each playing on the other with reflected and reflecting lustre, for a woman naturally says to herself, “When this man has so much wit, his flattery even must be worth something.”
And another day came, and another, and another party of friends filled the house, and still Mr. Churchill remained, and was now the delight of all. As far as concerned his successes in society, no one was more ready to join in applause than Beauclerc; but when Helen was in question he was different, though he had reasoned himself into the belief that he could not yet love Miss Stanley, therefore he could not be jealous. But he had been glad to observe that she had from the first seemed to see what sort of a person Mr. Churchill was. She was now only amused, as everybody must be, but she would never be interested by such a man as Horace Churchill, a wit without a soul. If she were—why he could never feel any further interest about her—that was all!
So it went on; and now Lady Cecilia was as much amused as she expected by these daily jealousies, conflicts, and comparisons, the feelings perpetually tricking themselves out, and strutting about, calling themselves judgments, like the servants in Gil Blas in their masters’ clothes, going about as counts dukes, and grandees.
“Well, really,” said Lady Cecilia to Helen, one day, as she was standing near her tambour frame, “you are an industrious creature, and the only very industrious person I ever could bear. I have myself a natural aversion to a needle, but that tambour needle I can better endure than a common one, because, in the first place, it makes a little noise in the world; one not only sees but hears it getting on; one finds, that without dragging it draws at every link a lengthened chain.”