commonplace. She spoke in the
simplicity of her heart, but he chose to think she was patronising
him--she had not talked commonplaces to the vicar. He tried to say
something smart and cutting,--stuttered, broke down, blushed, and
shrank back again to the wall, fancying that every eye in the room
was on him; and for one moment a flash of sheer hatred to Argemone
swept through him.

Was Argemone patronising him? Of course she was. True, she was but
three-and-twenty, and he was of the same age; but, spiritually and
socially, the girl develops ten years earlier than the boy. She was
flattered and worshipped by gray-headed men, and in her simplicity
she thought it a noble self-sacrifice to stoop to notice the poor
awkward youth. And yet if he could have seen the pure moonlight of
sisterly pity which filled all her heart as she retreated, with
something of a blush and something of a sigh, and her heart
fluttered and fell, would he have been content? Not he. It was her
love he wanted, and not her pity; it was to conquer her and possess
her, and inform himself with her image, and her with his own; though
as yet he did not know it; though the moment that she turned away he
cursed himself for selfish vanity, and moroseness and conceit.

'Who am I to demand her all to myself? Her, the glorious, the
saintly, the unfallen! Is not a look, a word, infinitely more than
I deserve? And yet I pretend to admire tales of chivalry! Old
knightly hearts would have fought and wandered for years to earn a
tithe of the favours which have been bestowed on me unasked.'--

Peace! poor Lancelot! Thy egg is by no means addle; but the chick
is breaking the shell in somewhat a cross-grained fashion.

CHAPTER VII: THE DRIVE HOME, AND WHAT CAME OF IT

Now it was not extraordinary that Squire Lavington had 'assimilated'
a couple of bottles of Carbonel's best port; for however abstemious
the new lord himself might be, he felt for the habits, and for the
vote of an old-fashioned Whig squire. Nor was it extraordinary that
he fell fast asleep the moment he got into the carriage; nor, again,
that his wife and daughters were not solicitous about waking him;
nor, on the other hand, that the coachman and footman, who were like
all the squire's servants, of the good old sort, honest, faithful,
boozing, extravagant, happy-go-lucky souls, who had 'been about the
place these forty years,' were somewhat owlish