Beatrice Wentworth was a being of vast importance. Well, I suppose people spoiled us because we were orphans. We were all more or less spoiled, and I think it was the ruin of my eldest brother. He was at Oxford at the time I am speaking of; and I was taken to Commemoration by some gay friends of ours, who had brothers and sons at Oxford.

[8]

[8]

“It was there I met Tom Pendrill. He was the ‘chum’ of one of the undergraduate sons of my chaperon, and he was a great man just then. He had distinguished himself tremendously in the schools, I know—had taken a double-first, or something, and other things beside. He was quite a lion in his own set, and I heard an immense deal in his praise, and was tremendously impressed, quite convinced that there was not such another man in the world. He was almost always in our party, and he took a great deal of notice of me. He gave us breakfast in his rooms, and I sat next him, and helped to do the honours of the table. You can’t think how proud I was at being singled out by him, how delighted I was to walk by his side, listening to his words of wisdom, how [9]elevated I often felt, how taken out of myself into quite a new world of thought and feeling.”

[9]

Beatrice paused. A smile—half sad, half bitter—played for a moment over her face; then she took up the thread of her narrative.

“I need not go into the subject of my feelings. I was very young, and all the glamour of youth and inexperience was upon me. I had never, in all my life, come across a man in the least like him—so clever, so witty, so cultured, and withal with so strong a personality. He was not silent and cynical, as he is now, but full of life and sparkle, of brilliance and humour. I was dazzled and captivated. I believed there had never been such a man in the world before. He was my ideal, my [10]hero; and he seemed to court me, which was the most wonderful thing of all.

[10]

“You know what young girls are like? No, perhaps you don’t, and I will avoid generalities, and speak only of myself. Just because he captivated me so much—my fancy, my intellect, my heart—just because I began to feel his power growing so strongly upon me, I grew shy, frightened, restive. I was very wilful and capricious. I wanted him to admire me, and I was proud that he seemed to do so; but I did not in the least want to acknowledge his power over me. I was frightened at it. I tried to ignore it—to keep it off.

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