Part 19 (1/2)
”There is nothing that I can tell you, child Let us rather talk of Kenneth”
”I do not wish to talk of Kenneth”
”Nay, but you must willy-nilly , swashbuckling ruffler that can sin? Does it not also occur to you that even a frail and tender littlehave I done?” she cried in consternation
”A grievous wrong to this poor lad Can you not realize how the only desire that governs hi favourably in your eyes?”
”That desire gives rise, then, to curious manifestations”
”He is mistaken in the means he adopts, that is all In his heart his one aim is to win your esteem, and, after all, it is the sentiment that matters, not its manifestation Why, then, are you unkind to him?”
”But I am not unkind Or is it unkindness to let him see that I nore theence? I have no patience with hi to show you that you yourself have driven hirow tiresorow tiresome because I preach of duty Marry, it is in truth a tiresome topic”
”How duty? Of what do you talk?” And a flush of incipient anger spread now on her fair cheek
”I will be clearer,” said he imperturbably ”This lad is your betrothed
He is at heart a good lad, an honourable and honest lad--at times haply over-honest and over-honourable; but let that be To please a whim, a caprice, you set yourself to flout him, as is the way of your sex when you behold aall unversed in the obliquity of woer finds favour in your eyes, and to win back this, the only thing that in the world he values, he behaves foolishly You flout him anew, and because of it He is as jealous with you as a hen with her brood”
”Jealous?” echoed Cynthia
”Why, yes, jealous; and so far does he go as to be jealous even of me,”
he cried, with infinitely derisive relish ”Think of it--he is jealous of ht!”
She did think of it as he bade her And by thinking she stue hoe may bear a senti its existence, until suddenly a chance word shall so urge it into life that it reveals itself with unan in a vague wonder at the scorn hich Crispin invested the notion that Kenneth should have cause for jealousy on his score Was it, she asked herself, so monstrously unnatural? Then in a flash the answer ca a matter for derision, such an attitude in Kenneth lacked not for foundation
In that moment she knew that it was because of Crispin; because of this man who spoke with such very scorn of self, that Kenneth had become in her eyes so mean and unworthy a creature Loved him she haply never had, but leastways she had tolerated--been even flattered by--his wooing
By contrasting hirown to despise him His weakness, his pusillanimity, his meannesses of soul, stood out in sharp relief by contrast with the h spirit of Sir Crispin
So easily races of face and foro had pleased her in Kenneth, see, purposeless rimfaced soldier of fortune; the looe of adolescence Since the day of his coht herself to look upon him as a hero stepped from the romancers' tales that in secret she had read The mystery that seeood--but the uess; his very melancholy, his ned to hih, until that mo dwelt in herspeech of Crispin's had
She loved him That men said his life had not been nice, that he was a soldier of fortune, little better than an adventurer, a ht, were matters of no moment then to her She loved hily bidden her to think whether Kenneth had cause to be jealous of hi of it, she found that did Kenneth knoas in her heart, he must have more than cause
She loved hie a woives and gives, and seeks nothing in return; that i, be his way through the world cast in places never so rugged; cleaving to him where all besides shall have abandoned hireater blessing than that of sharing it
And to such a love as this Crispin was blind--blind to the very possibility of its existence; so blind that he laughed to scorn the idea of a punyjealous of him And so, while she sat, her soul all mastered by her discovery, her face white and still for very awe of it, he to who her for another
”You have observed--you , ”and how do you allay it? You do not On the contrary, you excite it at every turn You are exciting it now by having--and I dare swear for no other purpose--lured me to ith you, to sit here with you and preach your duty to you And when, through jealousy, he shall have flown to fresh absurdities, shall you regret your conduct and the fruits it has borne? Shall you pity the lad, and by kindness induce him to be wiser? No You will h these displays, which are--though you , you will conclude that he is no fit s, and years hence perhaps another Tavern Knight, whose name will not be Crispin Galliard”