It was quite impossible for a young man so ardently devoted to the sex as I was, to be day after day in the company of a young lady with finer eyes than ever Reynolds painted, and with such a figure as Canova had worshipped, and not be very sensibly affected. I well remember leaning over her one day when she was playing the piano, and sighing inaudibly, “Yes! were Conny to deceive me, here might I find her substitute.” Did I start on becoming sensible of the escape of so disloyal a sentiment? Not I. I never started in my life at an idea of my own. Am I a Radcliffean, an Ainsworthian hero, that I skip in my cloak to an impulse, and recoil with bloodshot eyes before a fancy?
It was Conny’s fault. Were it the last drop in the well—I mean, were this my last breath, I should say, “Conny was to blame.”
I loved her as fondly as any man can love whose passion is fed by the beauty, but not by the promises, of the adored. Is beauty a good foundation for love? Are the Goodwin Sands a good dry dock for a ship? Beauty inspires passion, but will it create sincerity? Something more than that is wanted, I think. No love lasts that is unrequited. No lamp burns long that isn’t replenished with oil. There are hundreds of verses among the poets illustrative of this, the best of which I might easily quote if I knew where to find them. Don’t say this digression is neither here nor there. It is here and there too. It concerns my sincerity; it vindicates my loyalty.
Riding with Theresa on a fragrant and glowing summer evening, we fell to talking about Conny. By this time I had made up my mind to understand that she didn’t mean to answer my letter, and something like a sense of resignation was lodged at the centre of my being. All those tendencies to pull my hair, to neglect my cravat, to write verses against the whole sex, with citric acid in my ink-bottle, were subdued or dead. I had, indeed, my sneerful intervals, but Theresa was always at hand with her beauty for me to forget myself in.
How the subject came about I don’t know, but I remember that Theresa asked me if Conny had ever answered my letter.
“No,” I answered quickly, clapping my hand, so to speak, over the nerve-pulp her innocent question had laid bare.
“I suppose she does not think it worth while to write, as she hopes to meet you shortly.”
“That is no excuse,” I answered sternly. “I wrote to her eight, nine days ago, and she ought to have answered me.”
Theresa lifted her eyebrows, and thoughtfully patted her horse’s neck.
“You would have answered me,” I said.