speeches,” she said, “probably more in your own country than here; we are more simple, and as for me, I’m ignorant, I know that very well.  I am not as quick as other people, I suppose, but I don’t like this sort of thing, I never shall.  Somehow, it hurts me, it seems as if one despised me.  Well, never mind, it’s not that, of course; you are in the habit of doing it, because it’s the fashion.  But why won’t you talk to me naturally, just as other people do?”

Edmonson looked at her with absorbed attention.  He was convinced.  The thing was incredible, but it was true.  She was not feigning, she did not understand him.  Her blindness came from one of two causes, either she was incapable of passion, or her heart was not yet aroused.  For he argued that if she had loved any one she must have read him.

“I will do as you ask me,” he said simply, taking the only course that was open to him unless he had wished to banish himself entirely.  But as he walked slowly on beside her again the evil look came into his downcast eyes, and the shadow darted out in his thoughts terrible and triumphant.

When they were near the house, and she was about to turn back again toward the others, still enjoying the summer air, he said.  “Will you come with me into the hall?  I want to ask you about something I noticed there.”  This was only so far true that he had found the antlers which he remembered hung there an excuse to stand face to face with her a few moments longer, and to talk with her, and have her answers even about these trivial things all to himself before the others came.  It was of no use to pretend to himself now that disappointed ambition was the cause of his chagrin at losing Elizabeth; his feeling was not chagrin, it was something like fury.  He had never denied himself anything, he would not deny himself now.  As to this woman who the higher he found, and the more he admired her, the more she eluded him, and with every unconscious movement drew tighter the chain that bound him; he had a purpose concerning her.  He was not capable of deep or continued devotion, but when he had an object in view nothing mattered to him but that.  If he gained it, doubtless something else would absorb him; if he lost—­blackness filled this blank, but here he had resolved not to lose.

As he stood in the hall with Elizabeth beside the open door and watched her delicate face and perceived the readiness with which she answered his questions in full, as if glad of so simple a subject, he said to himself, “That fancy of hers for me was lighter than I thought.  She has not yet quaffed the nectar of love—­not yet—­not yet.”  He gave little attention to her story of the shooting of the stag, Stephen’s feat when a boy of fourteen; she did not of course know as much of the history of the Archdales as did the petted young beauty to whom he had been talking before dinner, and she in the midst of her fluent account wondered in her own mind where she had heard it all, and remembered that it had been one of Katie’s stories when they were at school together.