Onwards a few steps--only a few--and it brought Arthur Bohun level with the window of Mrs. Cumberland's drawing-room. It was not yet lighted. At the window, standing very closely together, stood the other doctor and Ellen Adair. In Captain Bohun's desperate jealousy, he stared Ellen full in the face, and made no movement of recognition. Turning away with a contemptuous movement, plainly discernible in the dusk, he went striding on.
Shakespeare never read more truly the human heart than when he said that jealousy makes the food it feeds on. Arthur Bohun went home almost maddened; not so much with jealousy in its absolute sense, as with indignation at the doctor's iniquitous presumption. Could he have analyzed his own heart fairly, he would have found there full trust in the good faith of Ellen Adair. But he was swayed by man's erring nature, and yielded to it.
How innocent it all was! how little suggestive, could Captain Bohun only have read events correctly. There had been no invitation to tea at all; Mr. Seeley had gone in just as they began to take it, and was offered a cup by Mrs. Cumberland. As to being together at the window, Ellen had been standing there to catch the fading light for her wool-work, perhaps as an excuse for leaving him and Mrs. Cumberland to converse alone; and he had just come up to her to say goodnight as Captain Bohun passed.
If we could only divine the truth of these fancies when jealousy puts them before us in its false and glaring light, some phases of our lives might be all the happier in consequence. Arthur Bohun lay tossing the whole night long on his sleepless pillow, tormenting himself by wondering what Ellen Adair's answer to Seeley would be. That the fellow in his audacity was proposing to her as they stood at the window, he could have sworn before the Lord Chief Baron of England. It was a wretched night; his tumultuous thoughts were sufficient to wear him out. Arthur had Collins' "Ode to the Passions" by heart; but it never occurred to him to recall any part of it to profit now.
"Thy numbers, Jealousy, to nought were fixed,
Sad proof of thy distressful state.
Of differing themes the veering song was mixed:
And now it courted Love; now, raving, called on Hate."