Page:Eliot - Felix Holt, the Radical, vol. I, 1866.djvu/231

Rh maque'). Felix ought properly to have been a little in love with her—never mentioning it, of course, because that would have been disagreeable, and his being a regular lover was out of the question. But it was quite clear that, instead of feeling any disadvantage on his own side, he held himself to be immeasurably her superior: and, what was worse, Esther had a secret consciousness that he was her superior. She was all the more vexed at the suspicion that he thought slightly of her; and wished in her vexation that she could have found more fault with him—that she had not been obliged to admire more and more the varying expressions of his open face and his deliciously good-humoured laugh, always loud at a joke against himself. Besides, she could not help having her curiosity roused by the unusual combinations both in his mind and in his outward position, and she had surprised herself as well as her father one day by suddenly starting up and proposing to walk with him when he was going to pay an afternoon visit to Mrs Holt, to try and soothe her concerning Felix. "What a mother he has!" she said to herself when they came away again; "but, rude and queer as he is, I cannot say there is anything vulgar about him. Yet—I don't know—if I saw him by the side of a