And all to end with the intimation that she had been behaving like a forward child—had gone too far and must be admonished—made to feel accordingly! The poisoned arrow pierced deeper and deeper into the girl's shrinking pride. The very foundations of self-respect seemed overthrown.
Suddenly her eye caught a dim and ghostly reflection of her own figure, as she sat with locked hands on the edge of the bed, in a long glass near, the only one of the kind which the rectory household possessed. Rose sprang up, snatched at the candle, which was flickering in the air of the open window, and stood erect before the glass, holding the candle above her head.
What the light showed her was a slim form in a white dressing-gown, that fell loosely about it; a rounded arm upstretched; a head, still crowned with its jessamine wreath, from which the bright hair fell heavily over shoulders and bosom; eyes, under frowning brows, flashing a proud challenge at what they saw; two lips, 'indifferent red,' just open to let the quick breath come through—all thrown into the wildest chiaroscuro by the wavering candle flame.
Her challenge was answered. The fault was not there. Her arm dropped. She put down the light.
'I am handsome,' she said to herself, her mouth quivering childishly. 'I am. I may say it to myself.'
Then, standing by the window, she stared into the night. Her room, on the opposite side of the house from Langham's, looked over the cornfields and the distance. The stubbles gleamed faintly; the dark woods, the clouds teased by the rising wind, sent a moaning voice to greet her.
'I hate him! I hate him!' she cried to the darkness, clenching her cold little hand.
Then presently she slipped on to her knees, and buried her head in the bed-clothes. She was crying—angry stifled tears which had the hot impatience of youth in them. It all seemed to her so untoward. This was not the man she had dreamed of—the unknown of her inmost heart. He had been young, ardent, impetuous like herself. Hand in hand, eye flashing into eye, pulse answering to pulse, they would have flung aside the veil hanging over life and plundered the golden mysteries behind it.
She rebels; she tries to see the cold alien nature which has laid this paralysing spell upon her as it is, to reason herself back to peace—to indifference. The poor child flies from her own half-understood trouble; will none of it; murmurs again wildly—
'I hate him! I hate him! Cold-blooded—ungrateful—unkind!'