It could scarce be called the first illusion of her life. It was, however, the first, where disappointment was likely to prove dangerous to the tranquillity of her spirit.
She was not unaware of this. She anticipated unhappiness for a while—hoping that time would enable her to subdue the expected pain.
At first, she fancied she would find a friend in her own strong will; and another in the natural buoyancy of her spirit. But as the days passed, she found reason to distrust both: for in spite of both, she could not erase from her thoughts the image of the man who had so completely captivated her imagination.
There were times when she hated him, or tried to do so—when she could have killed him, or seen him killed, without making an effort to save him! They were but moments; each succeeded by an interval of more righteous reflection, when she felt that the fault was hers alone, as hers only the misfortune.
No matter for this. It mattered not if he had been her enemy—the enemy of all mankind. If Lucifer himself—to whom in her wild fancy she had once likened him—she would have loved him all the same!
And it would have proved nothing abnormal in her disposition—nothing to separate her from the rest of womankind, all the world over. In the mind of man, or woman either, there is no connection between the moral and the passional. They are as different from each other as fire from water. They may chance to run in the same channel; but they may go diametrically opposite. In other words, we may love the very being we hate—ay, the one we despise!
Louise Poindexter could neither hate, nor despise, Maurice Gerald. She could only endeavour to feel indifference.
It was a vain effort, and ended in failure. She could not restrain herself from ascending to the azotea, and scrutinising the road where she had first beheld the cause of her jealousy. Each day, and almost every hour of the day, was the ascent repeated.
Still more. Notwithstanding her resolve, to avoid the accident of an encounter with the man who had made her miserable, she was oft in the saddle and abroad, scouring the country around—riding through the streets of the village—with no other object than to meet him.
During the three days that followed that unpleasant discovery, once again had she seen—from the housetop as before—the lady of the lazo en route up the road, as before accompanied by her attendant with the pannier across his arm—that Pandora’s box that had bred such mischief in her mind—while she herself stood trembling with jealousy—envious of the other’s errand.