de had turned from standing among her
daffodils, and had found herself confronting the open door of her saloon,
and John Oxon passing through it, Mistress Anne had seen that in her face
and his which had given to her a shock of terror. In John Oxon's blue
eyes there had been a set fierce look, and in Clorinda's a blaze which
had been like a declaration of war; and these same looks she had seen
since that day, again and again. Gradually it had become her sister's
habit to take Anne with her into the world as she had not done before her
widowhood, and Anne knew whence this custom came. There were times when,
by use of her presence, she could avoid those she wished to thrust aside,
and Anne noted, with a cold sinking of the spirit, that the one she would
plan to elude most frequently was Sir John Oxon; and this was not done
easily. The young man's gay lightness of demeanour had changed. The few
years that had passed since he had come to pay his courts to the young
beauty in male attire, had brought experiences to him which had been
bitter enough. He had squandered his fortune, and failed to reinstate
himself by marriage; his dissipations had told upon him, and he had lost
his spirit and good-humour; his mocking wit had gained a bitterness; his
gallantry had no longer the gaiety of youth. And the woman he had loved
for an hour with youthful passion, and had dared to dream of casting
aside in boyish insolence, had risen like a phoenix, and soared high and
triumphant to the very sun itself. "He was ever base," Clorinda had
said. "As he was at first he is now," and in the saying there was truth.
If she had been helpless and heartbroken, and had pined for him, he would
have treated her as a victim, and disdained her humiliation and grief;
magnificent, powerful, rich, in fullest beauty, and disdaining himself,
she filled him with a mad passion of love which was strangely mixed with
hatred and cruelty. To see her surrounded by her worshippers, courted by
the Court itself, all eyes drawn towards her as she moved, all hearts
laid at her feet, was torture to him. In such cases as his and hers, it
was the woman who should sue for love's return, and watch the averted
face, longing for the moment when it would deign to turn and she could
catch the cold eye and plead piteously with her own. This he had seen;
this, men like himself, but older, had taught him with vicious art; but
here was a woman who had scorned him at the hour