Simultaneously those details flashed into his own consciousness
with a horrible distinctness, depressing his spirits and extinguishing a
natural gayety and light chaff that had come back for a moment.
Moreover, to use his own expression, he was besottedly in love, and knew
that he betrayed himself every time his eyes met those of the girl, who,
he felt with bitterness and alarm, long before the salad, was making a
desperate attempt to entertain a very dull young man.
Once or twice a mocking glance flashed through those starry ingenuous
orbs, but was banished by the simple art of elevating the wicked iris and
revealing a line of saintly white. Alexina was quite determined to add a
British scalp to her small collection, and for the young man's possible
torment she cared not at all. With young arrogance she rather despised him
for his surrender before battle, or at all events for hauling down his flag
publicly; and her mind traveled with feminine satisfaction to the calm
smiling dominance, combined with utter devotion, of the man who had won
her as easily as she had conquered Richard Gathbroke. That the young
Englishman's nature was hot and tempestuous, with depths that even he had
not sounded, and her ideal knight's more effective mien but the expression
of a possibly meager and somewhat puritanical nature; that Dwight's heart
was a well-trained organ which would never commit an indiscretion, and that
young Gathbroke would have sold the world for her if she had been a flower
girl, or the downfall of her fortunes had sent her clerking, she was far
too inexperienced to guess; and it is doubtful if the knowledge would have
affected her had she possessed it.
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