nce with the blind gropings
of an undisciplined young soul; and Christopher--who generally
understood and sympathized with all Elisabeth's difficulties and
phases--was so jealous of her obvious attachment to Tremaine, and so
unhappy on account of it, that for the time being the faithful friend
was entirely swallowed up in the irate lover, sighing like one of the
Osierfield furnaces. Of course this was very unfair and tiresome of
him--nobody could deny that; but it is sometimes trying to the
amiability of even the best of men to realize that the purely mundane
and undeserved accident of want of money can shut them off entirely from
ever attaining to the best kind of happiness whereof their natures are
capable--and especially when they know that their natures are capable of
attaining and appreciating a very high standard of happiness indeed. It
may not be right to be unsociable because one is unhappy, but it is very
human and most particularly masculine; and Christopher just then was
both miserable and a man.

There was much about Alan that was very attractive to Elisabeth: he
possessed a certain subtlety of thought and an almost feminine quickness
of perception which appealed powerfully to her imagination. Imagination
was Elisabeth's weak, as well as her strong, point. She was incapable of
seeing people as they really were; but erected a purely imaginary
edifice of character on the foundations of such attributes as her rapid
intuition either rightly or wrongly perceived them to possess. As a
rule, she thought better of her friends than they deserved--or, at any
rate, she recognised in them that ideal which they were capable of
attaining, but whereto they sometimes failed to attain.

Life is apt to be a little hard on the women of Elisabeth's type, who
idealize their fellows until the latter lose all semblance of reality;
for experience, with its inevitable disillusionment, can not fail to put
their ideal lovers and friends far from them, and to hide their
etherealized acquaintances out of their sight; and to give instead, to
the fond, trusting souls, half-hearted lovers, semi-sincere friends, and
acquaintances who care for them only as the world can care. Poor
imaginative women--who dreamed that you had found a perfect knight and a
faithful friend, and then discovered that these were only an ordinary
selfish man and woman after all--life has many more such surprises in
store for you; and the surprises will shock you les