Generosity is
a very fine thing, at a proper time and within due limits. But it is
an insufferable bore to see one man engrossing every thought of all
the women, and leaving his friend to shiver in outer seclusion,
without even the alternative of solacing himself with what the more
fortunate individual has rejected. Yes, it was out of a foolish
bitterness of heart that I had spoken.
"Go on before," said Priscilla abruptly, and with true feminine
imperiousness, which heretofore I had never seen her exercise. "It
pleases me best to loiter along by myself. I do not walk so fast as
you."
With her hand she made a little gesture of dismissal. It provoked me;
yet, on the whole, was the most bewitching thing that Priscilla had
ever done. I obeyed her, and strolled moodily homeward,
wondering--as I had wondered a thousand times already--how
Hollingsworth meant to dispose of these two hearts, which (plainly to
my perception, and, as I could not but now suppose, to his) he had
engrossed into his own huge egotism.
There was likewise another subject hardly less fruitful of
speculation. In what attitude did Zenobia present herself to
Hollingsworth? Was it in that of a free woman, with no mortgage on
her affections nor claimant to her hand, but fully at liberty to
surrender both, in exchange for the heart and hand which she
apparently expected to receive? But was it a vision that I had
witnessed in the wood? Was Westervelt a goblin? Were those words of
passion and agony, which Zenobia had uttered in my hearing, a mere
stage declamation? Were they formed of a material lighter than
common air? Or, supposing them to bear sterling weight, was it a
perilous and dreadful wrong which she was meditating towards herself
and Hollingsworth?
Arriving nearly at the farmhouse, I looked back over the long slope
of pasture land, and beheld them standing together, in the light of
sunset, just on the spot where, according to the gossip of the
Community, they meant to build their cottage.
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