Creed was very funny, never taking any notice of her when he
met her in the morning. Then followed a minute account of where she had
been trying to get work; of an engagement promised; Mr. Lennard, too,
still wanted her to pose to him. At this she gashed a look at Hilary,
then cast down her eyes. She could get plenty of work if she began that
way. But she hadn't, because he had told her not, and, of course, she
didn't want to; she liked coming to Mr. Stone so much. And she got on
very well, and she liked London, and she liked the shops. She mentioned
neither Hughs nor Mrs. Hughs. In all this rigmarole, told with such
obvious purpose, stolidity was strangely mingled with almost cunning
quickness to see the effect made; but the dog-like devotion was never
quite out of her eyes when they were fixed on Hilary.
This look got through the weakest places in what little armour Nature
had bestowed on him. It touched one of the least conceited and most
amiable of men profoundly. He felt it an honour that anything so young
as this should regard him in that way. He had always tried to keep
out of his mind that which might have given him the key to her special
feeling for himself--those words of the painter of still life: "She's
got a story of some sort." But it flashed across him suddenly like an
inspiration: If her story were the simplest of all stories--the direct,
rather brutal, love affair of a village boy and girl--would not she,
naturally given to surrender, be forced this time to the very antithesis
of that young animal amour which had brought on her such, sharp
consequences?
But, wherever her devotion came from, it seemed to Hilary the grossest
violation of the feelings of a gentleman to treat it ungratefully.
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