you please her by speaking truth,« Vernon added, and laid
himself open to questions upon the truth, by which he learnt, with a perplexed
sense of envy and sympathy, that the boy's idea of truth strongly approximated
to his conception of what should be agreeable to Miss Middleton.
    He was lonely, bereft of the bard, when he had tucked Crossjay up in his bed
and left him. Books he could not read; thoughts were disturbing. A seat in the
library and a stupid stare helped to pass the hours, and but for the spot of
sadness moving meditation in spite of his effort to stun himself, he would have
borne a happy resemblance to an idiot in the sun. He had verily no command of
his reason. She was too beautiful! Whatever she did was best. That was the
refrain of the fountain-song in him; the burden being her whims, variations,
inconsistencies, wiles; her tremblings between good and naughty, that might be
stamped to noble or to terrible; her sincereness, her duplicity, her courage,
cowardice, possibilities for heroism and for treachery. By dint of dwelling on
the theme, he magnified the young lady to extraordinary stature. And he had
sense enough to own that her character was yet liquid in the mould, and that she
was a creature of only naturally youthful wildness provoked to freakishness by
the ordeal of a situation, shrewd as any that can happen to her sex in civilized
life. But he was compelled to think of her extravagantly, and he leaned a little
to the discrediting of her, because her actual image unmanned him and was
unbearable: and to say at the end of it »She is too beautiful! whatever she does
is best,« smoothed away the wrong he did her. Had it been in his power he would
have thought of her in the abstract - the stage contiguous to that which he
adopted: but the attempt was luckless; the Stagyrite would have failed in it.
What philosopher could have set down that face of sun and breeze and nymph in
shadow as a point in a problem?
    The library-door was opened at midnight by Miss Dale. She closed it quietly.
»You are not working, Mr. Whitford? I fancied you would wish to hear of the
evening. Professor Crooklyn arrived after all! Mrs. Mountstuart is bewildered:
she says she expected you, and that you did not excuse yourself to her, and she
cannot comprehend, et cætera. That is to say, she chooses bewilderment to
indulge in the exclamatory. She must be very much annoyed.