Bessie wore a broad shady hat, yet not shady enough to conceal the
impetuous blushes that mantled her cheeks on her companion's evasion.
She felt what it was the prelude to. Mr. Cecil Burleigh, inspired with
the needful courage by these fallacious signs, broke into a stammering
eloquence of passion that was yet too plain to be misunderstood--not
reflecting, he, that maiden blushes may have more sources than one. The
hot torrent of Bessie's rose from the fountain of indignation in her
heart--indignation at his inconstancy to the sweet lady who she knew
loved him, and his impertinence in daring to address herself when she
knew he loved that lady. She silently confessed that to this upshot his
poor pretences of wooing had tended from the first, and that she had
been wilfully half blind and wholly unbelieving--so unwilling are proud
young creatures to imagine that their best feelings can be traded
on--but she was none the less wrathful and scornful as she lifted her
eyes, dilated with tears, to his, and sweeping him a curtsey turned away
without a single word--without a single word, yet never was wooer more
emphatically answered.
They parted and went different ways. Bessie, thinking she would give all
she was worth that he had held his peace and let her keep her dream of
pity and sympathy, took the shrubbery path to the village and Miss
Hague's cottage-lodgings; and Mr. Cecil Burleigh, repenting too late the
vain presumption that had reckoned on her youth and ignorance, apart
from the divining power of an honest soul, walked off to Norminster to
rid himself of his heavy sense of mortification and discomfiture.
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