It won't gush out at a fixed hour and on a fixed day,
but it will irrigate, it will fertilise, it will brilliantly adorn your
conversation. Think how delightful it will be when your influence
becomes really social. Your facility, as you call it, will simply make
you, in conversation, the most charming woman in America."
It is to be feared, indeed, that Verena was easily satisfied (convinced,
I mean, not that she ought to succumb to him, but that there were
lovely, neglected, almost unsuspected truths on his side); and there is
further evidence on the same head in the fact that after the first once
or twice she found nothing to say to him (much as she was always saying
to herself) about the cruel effect her apostasy would have upon Olive.
She forbore to plead that reason after she had seen how angry it made
him, and with how almost savage a contempt he denounced so flimsy a
pretext. He wanted to know since when it was more becoming to take up
with a morbid old maid than with an honourable young man; and when
Verena pronounced the sacred name of friendship he inquired what
fanatical sophistry excluded him from a similar privilege. She had told
him, in a moment of expansion (Verena believed she was immensely on her
guard, but her guard was very apt to be lowered), that his visits to
Marmion cast in Olive's view a remarkable light upon his chivalry; she
chose to regard his resolute pursuit of Verena as a covert persecution
of herself.
Pages:
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230