No;
whatever she did must be spontaneous, voluntary, premeditated even,
and her lightest word worth weighing, her lightest action worth
anxious scrutiny as to its cause.
Still he had this about him that the peevish and puny lover has not.
Her bare presence was joy to him. Even when she was surrounded by
other figures, he saw and felt but the one; the rest were nothings.
But when she went out of his sight, some bright illusion seemed to
fade into cold and dark reality. Then it fell on him like a weighty,
icy hammer, that in three days he must go to sea for two years, and
that he was no nearer her heart now than he was at Font Abbey. Was he
even as near?
So the next afternoon he thrust in before Talboys, and put Lucy on her
horse by brute force, and griped her stout little boot, which she had
slyly substituted for a shoe, and touched her glossy habit, and felt a
thrill of bliss unspeakable at his momentary contact with her; but she
was no sooner out of sight than a hollow ache seized the poor fellow,
and he hung his head and sighed.
"I say, capting," said a voice in his ear. He looked up, and there
stood Tom, the stable-boy, with both hands in his pockets. Tom was not
there by his own proper movement, but was agent of Betsy, the
under-housemaid.
Female servants scan the male guests pretty closely too, without
seeming to do it, and judge them upon lamentably broad
principles--youth, health, size, beauty, and good temper. Oh, the
coarse-minded critics! Hence it befell that in their eyes, especially
after the fiddle business, David was a king compared with his rivals.
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