"Well, Miss Kitten," said I, "you seem to know how to behave to young men. I shall waste no more advice upon you."
And indeed she did not require it. She possessed in an exquisite degree that gift of a delightful manner which generally comes through inheritance, and cannot be perfectly gained by education. But my suggestion regarding Thorpe bore fruit, and henceforward she was a little more queenly and indifferent to him than ever, but never displayed pique or asperity. Yet, however badly she treated him, he quite deserved my title of a "tame cat:" he bore every reverse patiently, and indeed at times displayed an absolute heroism in the face of her indifference, going on in fluent recital of something he believed would interest her while she utterly ignored him and his subject. However, Thorpe was a good actor, and could play his part, and do it well, in spite of his audience. I sometimes fancied that he was less cheerful in those times than he seemed. In fact, I was ready to believe that he was in reality, as he was in pretence, seeking to win Helen's attention. Mr. Floyd looked at the matter in the same light.
"When he gets his congé he cannot complain of having received encouragement," he said once or twice. "But he's no fool: can it be that he is in love with Miss Lenox all the time, and that he tries to pique her with a show of devotion to Helen?"
"Tony Thorpe will never be in love with a poor girl," I replied: "there is nothing of that sort."
"I don't like Helen's having lovers," said Mr. Floyd. "When I married my wife it was the pleasantest thing in the world to know that no other man had ever breathed a word of love in her ears. 'The hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.' The first sound of a lover's voice brings a thrill to a girl's heart which she never knows but once. Miss Lenox's perceptions in that way must be considerably toughened: sole-leather is nothing in thickness compared to the epidermis of a coquette's heart. Now, a man can love with delicacy, fervor, passion a score of times. Women are frail creatures, are they not? I would like to have my little girl give her heart once, receive unbounded love in return, and never think of another man all her life. But Fate will manage her affairs for her, as for us all."
I have said that my morning interviews with Miss Lenox on the beach continued for a time. Suddenly they ceased: she came to the rendezvous no more, and it was impossible for me to get near enough to her to seek an explanation. I had felt quite dissipated and like a man of the world when I jumped out of my bed half awake each morning with an appointment on my hands. I had not told myself that it was bliss to meet her, and in fact had smiled a little at the recollection that it had been she who had asked me to join her ramble. Once or twice I had designated the whole thing a bore, and had wished it might rain and let me have a comfortable morning's nap instead of an hour or two with the most beautiful of girls at a romantic trysting-place. But most men deceive themselves about their feelings concerning women. When the first time I did not find Georgina awaiting me (for my orders were to join her walk, not to have her join mine) I lay on the rocks and took a nap until Thorpe came along the beach as usual and awoke me. But when I had failed to find her the second morning I was restless and disturbed. After two more fruitless quests I grew by turns insanely jealous and wretchedly self-distrustful.
Had I vexed her? What had I said? what had I done? I went over and over again every word of our talks: every mood of hers, every blush and glance and smile, lived again for me. We had spoken of many things those mornings we had met, yet there had been small reference to our mutual relations; and certainly if there were love-making on my part, it had colored none of our moods to any passion. I had travelled and seen many people: I had been introduced in courts, and had, by Mr. Floyd's influence, penetrated into an exclusive and brilliant continental society, where I had found much to observe. These reminiscences of mine had delighted Georgina: she had the irresistible feminine instinct for details, the analysis of which made a mastery of brilliant results easily attainable to her who possessed, to begin with, remarkable beauty, and, if not tact, so bewildering a way of doing what she chose that in the eyes of men at least she lacked nothing which grace and good taste could teach her. She was always anxious, too, to hear everything concerning Mr. Floyd—his friends abroad, his habits, his vie intime at certain houses which had been his favorite lounge for years while he was minister at ——. Garrulity was by no means my habit in those days, but I had talked to her very freely: indeed, she could do with me what she wished.
But why had she suddenly given me up? Had she tired of me, exhausted me, wrung my mind dry of interest; and flung me by like a squeezed orange? I lay in wait for her in the passages that I might speak to her, but she seemed never to be alone any more. I would lurk in her path for hours, only to be rewarded by the sight of her dress vanishing in another direction. I wrote her notes, to none of which would she reply. "If a woman flies, she flies to be pursued," I had heard all my life. Elusive, mocking goddess that she was, I felt every day more and more ardent in my pursuit, yet I rarely saw her now except at breakfast, when she was demure, a little weary, and altogether indifferent to me. I determined to follow her into society.
It was early in July now, and the watering-place life was at its gayest. I had hitherto accepted no invitations, from respect for the habits of the house where I was staying, but now I examined with interest every card and note brought to me. Accordingly, I set out on a round of pleasure-seeking, which soon transformed me from a boy whose foolish aim in life was to be as clever as other men into an impassioned lover. Other men may look back upon their first love with a certain pleasing sentimentality: in spite of all the years that now lie between me and the fever of those few months at The Headlands, I still suffer bitterly from the recollection of that time.