"By St. George, you mean. Why, you suspicious old boy, you do seem not satisfied; and yet Helen Saville will be away three or four days."
"I'll be hanged if I can make you out!" said the major, and walked away.
Wilton threw himself into an arm-chair and laughed aloud; then he turned very grave, and thought long and deeply. If Moncrief only knew where the real danger lay, and what it was! How was it that he had permitted this mere whim, half curiosity, half compassion, to grow into such troublesome proportions? He knew it was folly, and yet he could not resist! He had always felt interested and attracted by that strange girl whose mingled coldness and sweetness charmed and wounded him; but now, since he had seen her oftener, and listened to her voice, and heard the sudden but rare outbreaks of enthusiasm and feeling which would force themselves into expression, as if in spite of her will, he was conscious that his feelings were deepening into intense passion and tenderness.
To catch a sympathetic look, a special smile, a little word to himself alone—such were the nothings watched for, sought, treasured, remembered by our patrician soldier. The vision of that poor, suffering boy leaning his head against Ella and clasped in her arms, seemed indelibly stamped upon his brain. It was constantly before him, though he fought gallantly against it.
It seemed to have brought about a crisis of feeling. Before that, though touched, interested, curious, he was not absorbed; now, reason as he would, resist as he would, he could not banish the desperate longing to be in that boy's place just for once. In short, Wilton was possessed by one of those rare but real passions which, when they seize upon a man of his age, are infinitely more powerful, more dangerous, or, as the case may be, more noble, than when they partake of the eager effervescence of youth.
And what was to be the end thereof?—so he asked himself as, starting from his seat, he paced the room.
Ardently as he felt, he could not but acknowledge that to marry a girl, not only in a position little more than menial, but of whose antecedents he knew absolutely nothing—who, for some mysterious reason, did not seem to have a friend on earth—was a piece of folly he ought to be ashamed to commit. And yet to give her up—worse still, to leave her for some demure curate, some enterprising bagman to win, perhaps to trample upon? Impossible!
What then? It must not be asserted that the possibility of some tie less galling and oppressive than matrimony never presented itself to Ralph Wilton's mind. He had known such conditions among his friends, and some (according to his lax but not altogether unpopular opinions) had not turned out so badly for any of the parties concerned; but in this case he rejected the idea as simply out of the question. He would no more dare breathe it to that obscure little girl than to a princess. It would be hard enough to win or rouse her to admit him as a lover, even on the most honorable terms. She seemed not to think such things existed for her. There was in her such a curious mixture of frankness and indifference, coldness, sweetness, all flecked with sparks of occasional fire, that Wilton could not help believing she had some uncommon history; and there were times when he felt that, if he but asked her, she would tell him everything he craved to know. Never had he met a woman (for, young as she was, she was eminently womanly) so utterly without coquetry. Her perfect freedom from this feminine ingredient was almost insulting, and a certain instinct warned him from attempting to break through the invisible barrier which her unconscious simplicity created. Yet all this restraint was becoming intolerable. At Brosedale he never saw her alone; out of it, he never saw her at all. The desire to know all about her, to impress her, to win her, and the struggling instinct of caste, the dread of making some false step that would ruin him in her estimation, tormented him almost into a fever.
His long meditation ended in his ringing sharply, and ordering round the dog-cart to drive into Monkscleugh.
"It's sure to snow, sir," said his servant.