She eyed him steadily, noticing his morose, inward look.
"The responsibility has been heavy on you, lad. Do you know I prayed for you last night. I felt that you were not alone. I was with you—in the spirit."
"You are always very good, Rose."
"Am I? I think we always understood each other, Jasper, even when we were children."
[XIV]
Rose Benham's sentimentality was part of the guile of the huntress. Ordinarily she was a hard and very shrewd young woman, capable of managing most men and horses, and sincere enough when her egotistical piety was on the prowl. She knew that there were other women who desired to marry Jasper Benham. Her determination to marry him herself was made up of the lust to possess, and the desire to defeat rivals.
"Jasper, you will see me back to Beech Hill."
She was on the edge of an appealing simper, and detestable as most plain and hard young women are when they ape passions that they do not possess. Rose went about such matters as though she were selling pots and pans in a shop. Cleverness cannot take the place of instinct. That is why clever people are often such wearisome fools.
"Do you want to go back at once?"
They had driven and ridden a little way along the Sea Road, and Miss Benham was looking with some of her provincial scorn at the gay folk who idled there. To a certain type of woman all fashionable people are profligates. Most women have a secret desire to dazzle and to devastate. It is the utter inability of the majority to do anything of the kind that gives such a feline viciousness to their morality.