Nevertheless, the illusion of the theatre, which her memory had partially renewed, her self-consciousness finally dispelled, and her conclusion was in lame contrast to her beginning:
"I should just have married him in spite of them all."
Of such material was Stainton's wooing made. Though it may seem but poor stuff to you, it did not seem so to those who wove it, and it was, if you will but reflect upon your own, the material generally in vogue.
Our modern method of courting is, of course, the most artificial phase of modern artificial life. The period of courtship is, for most lovers, what Sunday used to be for the small boy in the orthodox family of the early 'seventies. As he then put on his best clothes for the Sabbath, our men and women now put on their best manners for the courting. As he then put off his real self at church-time, they now lay aside, for this supposedly romantic interlude in an existence presently to return to the acknowledged prosaic, all their crudities. It was thus with Muriel and Stainton.
Not that the latter meant to appear other than he was. His great Plan presumed, indeed, quite the reverse. He was intent that Muriel should admire not his wealth or his reputation, but his inherent worth and the genuine basis for his reputation. He was resolved that she should love not any or all of the things that he might be, but the one thing, the real self, that he had himself made. His fault, according to the prevailing standards, if any fault resulted, consisted only in his insistence upon a too introspectively observed ideal of just what that thing happened to be.
Nor yet, and this is likewise intrinsic, would the severest scrutiny have revealed in Muriel any realisation of a pose upon her own part. Her aunt, trusting as do most guardians of youth to a natural intuition in the ward, which has no standing in fact, refrained from informing the girl in plain language what it was that Stainton wanted. Mrs. Newberry's fears were ungrounded: the conventional calm had not been disturbed, and Muriel, save for timid smiles at the butcher's boy when he called at the school and furtive glances at the acolytes in church, had never yet known love. Not guessing the truth, Muriel was merely, for the first time, being accorded a glimpse of those kingdoms of this world of which all schoolgirls have had their stolen dreams. With what she saw she was frankly delighted, and when a pretty young girl is frankly delighted, a pretty young girl is obviously not at her worst.
"You look very happy nowadays," said Mrs. Newberry at the luncheon-table, looking, however, not at the subject of her remarks but at the master of her affections, who, chancing to be lunching at home, sat opposite her.
"I am, Aunt Ethel," said Muriel. "I always have been happy, but I am happier than ever now."
Mrs. Newberry smiled meaningly at Preston, but Muriel could not see the smile, and Preston would not.
"Why is that?" asked Ethel.