With
her native strength, and her experience of the world, she could not
be supposed to need any help of mine. Nevertheless, I was really
generous enough to feel some little interest likewise for Zenobia.
With all her faults (which might have been a great many besides the
abundance that I knew of), she possessed noble traits, and a heart
which must, at least, have been valuable while new. And she seemed
ready to fling it away as uncalculatingly as Priscilla herself. I
could not but suspect that, if merely at play with Hollingsworth, she
was sporting with a power which she did not fully estimate. Or if in
earnest, it might chance, between Zenobia's passionate force and his
dark, self-delusive egotism, to turn out such earnest as would
develop itself in some sufficiently tragic catastrophe, though the
dagger and the bowl should go for nothing in it.
Meantime, the gossip of the Community set them down as a pair of
lovers. They took walks together, and were not seldom encountered in
the wood-paths: Hollingsworth deeply discoursing, in tones solemn and
sternly pathetic; Zenobia, with a rich glow on her cheeks, and her
eyes softened from their ordinary brightness, looked so beautiful,
that had her companion been ten times a philanthropist, it seemed
impossible but that one glance should melt him back into a man.
Oftener than anywhere else, they went to a certain point on the slope
of a pasture, commanding nearly the whole of our own domain, besides
a view of the river, and an airy prospect of many distant hills.
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