Page:Rebecca.pdf/9

188 have done. One lesson from early experience—one touch of more delicate feeling—and Rebecca's heart might have been his. Though his age doubled hers, and his personal appearance was harsh even to forbiddingness, she might have loved him. It is the mistake of a coxcomb, whose experience of affection is all to come—if it ever comes—to say that women are won by mere good looks. Though it does not owe its birth to them. Gratitude and Vanity are the nurses that rock the cradle of Love. Neither of these did Vernon deign to conciliate. Angry at a feeling with which he nevertheless struggled in vain, the conflict gave even additional harshness to his manner; and he contradicted Rebecca’s opinions, reproached her likings, disdained her pursuits, and dealt out condemnation on all her favourite volumes, as if not allowing his external demeanour to be affected were some excuse for his internal preference. About a month before the period of which we are now speaking, he had openly offered himself as suitor to Rebecca Clinton. One evening, when his temper had been softened by the patient suffering of her father—from which the conversation had taken an unusually subdued tone—the invalid was led, from alluding to his illness, to touch upon its consequences; and for a few minutes the image of his orphan girl destroyed all the firmness of his philosophy, all the resignation of religion. He was startled by Richard Vernon rising, and, with words