“How I have mistaken her, the poor, dear child!” thought Cicely’s mother. “I had no idea she was capable of such an amount of feeling. What a loving little creature she is!”
And Cicely was told of her cousin’s unexpected display of affection for her, and felt vexed with herself that she could not help thinking it a little ill-timed and uncalled for.
It is a mistake to suppose that suffering must be noble to be genuine and severe. Geneviève’s distress sprang from no high source: such of it as was not of the nature of mortification and wounded vanity, was principally composed of childish disappointment in the destruction of her dazzling visions of wealth and grandeur. She had some amount of regard for Trevor himself; she admired him, she liked his pleasant voice and gentle deference of manner; she thought she loved him devotedly, she had long ago made up her mind to fall in love with none but a thoroughly desirable parti, therefore the fact of his wealth and position by no means interfered with her belief in the genuineness of her affection for him. That she was very thoroughly in love with the idea of marrying him, of obtaining all the pleasant things that would certainly fall to the share of his wife, there was not the shadow of a doubt. And the disappointment of her hopes fell upon her with crushing weight. There was nothing of true pathos or tragedy in her composition; her cup was but a pretty toy, brittle as egg-shell, though, unlike egg-shell, very capable of repair, but, such at it was, it was just now full to the brim with the bitter draught, which no reserve of latent heroism was at hand to render less unpalatable.
She threw herself down on the bed and sobbed.
“I wish I had never come to England I wish they had told me at first—I wish, oh! how I wish I had never seen him,” she cried.
Then her glance fell on the little bow of red ribbon which she had fastened to her dress that very morning.
“Naughty little ribbon, detestable little ribbon, I put you on to make me look pretty, that he should think me pretty,” she exclaimed, throwing the rose-coloured knot to the other end of the room, “and now I must think of him as the fiancé of my cousin! It matters not now that he thinks me pretty or ugly; he can never be anything more to me. And Cicely, she who is already rich, fétée,—who could find partis without number. Ah, but it is cruel!”
[CHAPTER IV.]
MAN AND WOMAN.
“La discussion n’est vraiment possible et efficace qu’entre gens du même avis.”