ion was the cause
of his chagrin at losing Elizabeth; his feeling was not chagrin, it was
something like fury. He had never denied himself anything, he would not
deny himself now. As to this woman who the higher he found, and the more
he admired her, the more she eluded him, and with every unconscious
movement drew tighter the chain that bound him; he had a purpose
concerning her. He was not capable of deep or continued devotion, but
when he had an object in view nothing mattered to him but that. If he
gained it, doubtless something else would absorb him; if he
lost--blackness filled this blank, but here he had resolved not to lose.

As he stood in the hall with Elizabeth beside the open door and watched
her delicate face and perceived the readiness with which she answered
his questions in full, as if glad of so simple a subject, he said to
himself, "That fancy of hers for me was lighter than I thought. She has
not yet quaffed the nectar of love--not yet--not yet." He gave little
attention to her story of the shooting of the stag, Stephen's feat when
a boy of fourteen; she did not of course know as much of the history of
the Archdales as did the petted young beauty to whom he had been talking
before dinner, and she in the midst of her fluent account wondered in
her own mind where she had heard it all, and remembered that it had been
one of Katie's stories when they were at school together.

"You see how large a creature it must have been," she finished, "the
forehead hangs quite low, but I can't touch the tip of the under branch
of this antler." She made the effort as she spoke, and reaching up on
tiptoe, caught at the antler to steady herself. It swung a little on one
side, and she stood looking at the hole torn in the tapestry by
Stephen's gun on that day, when he had gone into the woods in desperate
mood. It had been covered, and no one had noticed it, unless, possibly,
the servants in dusting, but, if so, they had not told of the accident,
not wishing to run the risk of being blamed for it.

"Did I do that?" asked Elizabeth. It seemed to her as if to have injured
an Archdale to the value of a pin would be intolerable.

"No indeed," said Edmonson. "I saw it just as you moved. The antler is
smooth here, see." And he made her pass her hand over the polished
surface above the tear. "Perhaps there is some roughness in the wall,"
he added, "it may be a nail under the tapestry that somebody found out
before we came."