The effect was that by
the time the yacht anchored off Ryde, she had lost her ease in his
society, and had become as shy as he was capricious, for she thought him
a most capricious and uncertain person in temper and demeanor.
Yet it was not caprice that influenced his behavior. He was quite
unconscious of the variableness that taxed her how to meet it. He
approved of Bessie: he admired her--face, figure, air, voice, manner. He
judged that she would probably mature into a quiet and loving woman of
no very pronounced character, and there was a direct purpose in his mind
to cultivate her affection and to make her his wife. He thought her a
nice girl, sweet and sensible, but she did not enchant him. Perhaps he
was under other magic--under other magic, but not spell-bound beyond his
strength to break the charm.
Mr. Cecil Burleigh was a man of genius and of soaring
ambition--well-born, well-nurtured, but as the younger son of a younger
son absolutely without patrimony. At his school and his university he
had won his way through a course of honors, and he would disappoint all
who knew him if he did not revive the traditions of his name and go onto
achieve place, power, and fame. To enter Parliament was necessary for
success in the career he desired to run, and the first step towards
Parliament for a poor young man was a prudent marriage into a family of
long standing, wide connection, and large influence in their county--so
competent authorities assured him--and all these qualifications had the
Fairfaxes of Kirkham, with a young heiress sufficiently eligible,
besides, to dispose of.
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