THE PATH OF DUTY.
Down at Tilgate, meanwhile, Elma Clifford had met more than once
with Cyril Waring at friends' houses around, for ever since the
accident, Society had made up its mind that Elma ought to marry her
companion in the tunnel; and, when Society once makes up its mind
on a question of this sort, why, it does its level best in the long
run to insure the fulfilment of its own prediction.
Wherever Elma had met her painter, however, during those few short
weeks, she had seen him only before the quizzing eyes of all the
world; and though she admitted to herself that she liked him very
much, she was nevertheless so thoroughly frightened by her own
performance after the Holkers' party that she almost avoided him,
in spite of officious friends--partly, it is true, from a pure
feeling of maidenly shame, but partly also from a deeper-seated
and profoundly moral belief that with this fierce mad taint upon
her as she naturally thought, it would be nothing short of wrong
in her even to marry. She couldn't meet Cyril now without thinking
at once of that irresistible impulse which had seized her by the
throat, as it were, and bent her to its wild will in her own room
after their interview at the Holkers'; and the thought did far
more than bring a deep blush into her rich brown cheek--it made her
feel most acutely she must never dream of burdening him with that
terrible uncertainty and all it might enclose in it of sinister
import.
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