victim of a pious mania which rendered him dangerously unsound in the
head. This, obviously, was the truth of the matter. On no other theory
could his pitying her be satisfactorily explained.
It was true that, with the dying down of her own sense of vague ambient
perils, she herself had come once more to feel dreadfully sorry for Jack
Dalhousie, and even to admit in her meditations that she could have
afforded to be more magnanimous in defending him from gossip. But then
that did not at all change the fact that Dalhousie deserved the severest
punishment for all the trouble and worry he had brought her. It clearly
was not right, was not moral, to make things too easy for wrongdoers.
She had gradually come to see herself as a custodian of the moral law in
this quarter, a tribunal of justice which, while upholding the
salubriousness of punition, yet strives to keep as large and generous
as it can.
Therefore it followed as the night the day that Mr. Vivian, who could
work himself up to the condition of feeling sorry for her as she
discharged her painful duties (while admiring her loveliness), was a
sort of camp-meeting madman. He was an advanced kind of religious
fanatic, nearly in the foaming stages, something like a whirling
dervish. His emotional gibberings were beneath the notice of sane,
wholesome people.
Still, in lengthening retrospect, Carlisle had become quite dissatisfied
with the manner in which she had permitted the summer-house interview to
terminate. It was somewhat galling to recall the tameness with which she
had allowed a Shouting Methodist such a last word as that, entirely
unreproved. Because unreproved, the staggering word had stuck fast; in
spite of all efforts, it remained as a considerable irritation in the
background of her mind. Many times she had resolved that, if she ever
saw the man again (which seemed unlikely, as nobody appeared ever to
have heard of him), she would make a point of saying something pretty
sharp and definite to him, showing him how little she cared for the
|