Cornelia was brought up short and sharp by an unexpected assent. To disparage America was an unforgivable offence, and she was prepared to denounce the judgment of ignorance in words of flame. Her anger was not abated, but merely turned in another direction, by the discovery that it was not ignorance, but blindness which she had now to denounce—the blindness of the obtuse Englishman who had been granted a privilege which he was incapable of appreciating.
“Some people travel about with such a heap of prejudice as baggage that they might as well stay at home and be done with it. Englishmen pride themselves on being conservative, and if they’ve once gotten an idea into their heads, it takes more’n they’ll ever see with their eyes to get it out. I guess you spent your time in my country seeing just exactly what you’d calculated on from the start. It’s big enough to rear all sorts, and enlightened enough to hold ’em!”
“It is certainly very big,” assented Guest, in a tone of colourless civility. Cornelia hated him for his indifference, his patronage, his thinly-veiled antagonism. She was accustomed to a surfeit of masculine attention, and cherished a complacent faith in her own fascinations. It was a new and disagreeable experience to meet a man who, so far from exhibiting the well-known symptoms of subjugation, was honestly anxious to avoid her society. To feel herself disliked; to be a bore to two men—the one eager to hand her over to his friend, the other furious at being so trapped—can the world contain a deeper degradation for feminine three-and-twenty? Cornelia’s mood changed before it. The excitement which had tided her over the events of the afternoon died away, to be succeeded by a wave of sickening home-sickness. She was lonesome—she wanted her poppar! She hated this pokey place, and everyone in it. She guessed she’d take a cabin in the first boat and sail away home. ... Her lips quivered, and she blinked rapidly to suppress a threatening tear. She would rather shoot herself than cry before this patronising Englishman, but it was almost past endurance to play second fiddle all the afternoon, be snubbed on the way home, and look forward to an evening spent in propitiating two nervous old ladies!
“I don’t get any bou-quets in this play!” soliloquised Cornelia, sadly. “’Far’s I can see, there isn’t a soul in Great Britain that cares a dump about me at the present moment, except, maybe, Aunt Soph, and she’d like me a heap better at a distance!” She sighed involuntarily, and Captain Guest, watching her from beneath his lowered lids, was visited by an uncomfortable suspicion that while criticising another, his own behaviour had not been above reproach. Now that the girl had lost her aggressive air, and looked tired and sad, the feminine element made its appeal. Arrogance gave place to sympathy, prejudice to self-reproach. ... She was only a little thing after all, and as slim as a reed.
Rapidly reviewing the incidents of the afternoon, he was as much surprised as shocked at the recollection of his own discourtesy. This stranger had overheard his frank declaration of dislike, had probably also seen the glance of reproach which he had cast upon Greville in the porch before starting out on this drive. Twice in a few hours had he overstepped the bounds of politeness, he, who flattered himself on presenting an unimpeachable exterior, whatever might be the inward emotions! The explanation of the lapse was a suddenly conceived prejudice at the moment of first meeting. The girl’s jaunty self-possession had struck a false note, and he had labelled her as callous and selfish. Now, looking at her afresh, he realised that this was not the face of a cold-hearted woman. This girl could fed! She was feeling now—feeling something painful, depressing. His eyes fell once more on her ungloved hands; he noticed that she held the right wrist tightly grasped, and even as he did so memory flashed back a picture of her as she had stood above him on the bank, her hands held in the same strained position. Afterwards he marvelled at the accuracy of that brain picture, but for the moment concern overwhelmed every other feeling. The inquiry came in quick, almost boyish tones, strangely different from his previous utterances.
“I say! have you hurt your wrist? You are holding it as if it were painful.”
Cornelia turned to see a face as altered as the voice, elevated her brows in involuntary surprise, and drawled an indifferent assent.
“I guess I ricked it, hanging on to those reins. It was pulled half out of the sockets.”
“Didn’t you have anything done for it at the house?”
“No.”