ble side of her character could be depreciated; the natural woman, the specimen of English girlhood that he loved, no one could impugn or harm.
Meetings had latterly taken place between them without any pretence of accident, and these were facilitated in an amazing manner by the duty imposed upon her of visiting the school as the representative of her father. At her very next appearance he told her all he thought. It was when the children had left the room for the quarter of an hour's airing that he gave them in the middle of the morning.
She was quite hurt at being treated with justice, and a crowd of tears came into her sorrowful eyes. She had never thought of half that he feared, and almost questioned his kindness in enlightening her.
"Perhaps you are right," she murmured, with the merest motion of lip. "Yes, it is sadly true. Should our conduct become known, nobody will judge us fairly. 'She was a wild, weak girl,' they will say."
"To care for such a man — a village youth. They will even suppress the fact that his father was a painter of no mean power, and a gentleman by education, little as it would redeem us; and justify their doing so by reflecting that in adding to the contrast they improve the tale.
And calumny meanwhile shall feed on us
As worms devour the dead: what we have done
None shall dare vouch, though it be truly known.
And they will continue, 'He was an artful fellow to win a girl's affections in that way — one of the mere scum of the earth,' they'll say."
"Don't, don't make it so bad!" she implored, weeping outright. "They cannot go so far. Human nature is not so wicked and blind. And they dare not speak so disrespectfully of me, or of any one I choose to favor." A slight haughtiness was apparent in these words. "But, oh, don't let us talk of it—it makes the time miserable."
However, she had been warned. But the difficulty which presented itself to her mind was, after all, but a small portion of the whole. It was how should they meet together without causing a convulsion in neighboring society. His was more radical and complex. The only natural drift of love was towards marriage. But how could he picture, at any length of years ahead, her in a cottage as his wife, or himself in a mansion as her husband? He in the one case, she in the other, were alike painfully incredible.
But time had flown, and he conducted her to the door. "Good-bye, Egbert," she said tenderly.
"Good-bye, dear, dear madam," he answered; and she was gone.
Geraldine had never ~hinted to him to call her by her Christian name, and finding that she did not particularly wish it he did not care to do so. "Madam" was as good a name as any other for her, and by adhering to it and using it at the warmest moments it seemed to change its nature from that of a mere title to a soft pet sound. He often wondered in after days at the strange condition of a girl's heart, which could allow so much in reality, and at the same time permit the existence of a little barrier such as that; how the keen, intelligent mind of woman could be ever so slightly hoodwinked by a sound. Yet, perhaps, it was womanlike, after all, and she may have caught at it as the only straw within reach of that dignity or pride of birth which was drowning in her impetuous affection.
CHAPTER VIII.
The world and its ways have a certain worth,
And to press a point while these oppose
Were a simple policy: best wait,
And we lose no friends, and gain no foes.
The inborn necessity of ransacking the future for a germ of hope led Egbert Mayne to dwell for longer and longer periods on the at first rejected possibility of winning and having her. And apart from any thought of marriage, he knew that Geraldine was sometimes a trifle vexed that their experiences contained so little in common — that he had never dressed for dinner, or made use of a carriage in his life; even though in literature he was her master, thanks to his tastes.
For the first time he seriously contemplated a visionary scheme which had been several times cursorily glanced at; a scheme almost as visionary as any ever entertained by a man not yet blinded to the limits of the possible. Lighted on by impulse, it was not taken up without long calculation, and it was one in which every link was reasoned out as carefully and as clearly as his powers would permit. But the idea that he would be able to carry it through was an assumption which, had he bestowed upon it one hundredth part of the thought spent on the details of its working, he would have thrown aside as unfeasible.
