She coloured again. She was anxious that he should know her to be not that stupid statue of Constancy in a corner doating on the antic Deception. Reminiscences of the interview overnight made it oppressive to her to hear herself praised for always pointing like the needle. Her newly enfranchised individuality pressed to assert its existence. Vernon, however, not seeing this novelty, continued, to her excessive discomfort, to baste her old abandoned image with his praises. They checked hers; and, moreover, he had suddenly conceived an envy of her life-long, uncomplaining, almost unaspiring, constancy of sentiment. If you know lovers when they have not reason to be blissful, you will remember that in this mood of admiring envy they are given to fits of uncontrollable maundering. Praise of constancy, moreover, smote shadowily a certain inconstant, enough to seem to ruffle her smoothness and do no hurt. He found his consolation in it, and poor Laetitia writhed.
Without designing to retort, she instinctively grasped at a weapon of defence in further exalting his devotedness; which reduced him to cast his head to the heavens and implore them to partially enlighten her. Nevertheless, maunder he must; and he recurred to it in a way so utterly unlike himself that Laetitia stared in his face. She wondered whether there could be anything secreted behind this everlasting theme of constancy. He took her awakened gaze for a summons to asseverations of sincerity, and out they came. She would have fled from him, but to think of flying was to think how little it was that urged her to fly, and yet the thought of remaining and listening to praises undeserved and no longer flattering, was a torture.
"Mr. Whitford, I bear no comparison with you."
"I do and must set you for my example, Miss Dale."
"Indeed, you do wrongly; you do not know me."
"I could say that. For years ...
"Pray, Mr. Whitford!"
"Well, I have admired it. You show us how self can be smothered."
"An echo would be a retort on you!"
"On me? I am never thinking of anything else."
"I could say that."
"You are necessarily conscious of not swerving."
"But I do; I waver dreadfully; I am not the same two days running."
"You are the same, with 'ravishing divisions' upon the same.
"And you without the 'divisions.' I draw such support as I have from you."
"From some simulacrum of me, then. And that will show you how little you require support."
"I do not speak my own opinion only."
"Whose?"
"I am not alone."
"Again let me say, I wish I were like you!"
"Then let me add, I would willingly make the exchange!"
"You would be amazed at your bargain."
"Others would be!"
"Your exchange would give me the qualities I'm in want of, Miss Dale."
"Negative, passive, at the best, Mr. Whitford. But I should have . . ."
"Oh!--pardon me. But you inflict the sensations of a boy, with a dose of honesty in him, called up to receive a prize he has won by the dexterous use of a crib."
"And how do you suppose she feels who has a crown of Queen o" the May forced on her head when she is verging on November?"
He rejected her analogy, and she his. They could neither of them bring to light the circumstances which made one another's admiration so unbearable. The more he exalted her for constancy, the more did her mind become bent upon critically examining the object of that imagined virtue; and the more she praised him for possessing the spirit of perfect friendliness, the fiercer grew the passion in him which disdained the imputation, hissing like a heated iron-bar that flings the waterdrops to steam. He would none of it; would rather have stood exposed in his profound foolishness.
Amiable though they were, and mutually affectionate, they came to a stop in their walk, longing to separate, and not seeing how it was to be done, they had so knit themselves together with the pelting of their interlaudation.
"I think it is time for me to run home to my father for an hour," said Laetitia.
"I ought to be working," said Vernon.
Good progress was made to the disgarlanding of themselves thus far; yet, an acutely civilized pair, the abruptness of the transition from floweriness to commonplace affected them both, Laetitia chiefly, as she had broken the pause, and she remarked:--"I am really Constancy in my opinions."
"Another title is customary where stiff opinions are concerned.
Perhaps by and by you will learn your mistake, and then you will acknowledge the name for it."
"How?" said she. "What shall I learn?"
"If you learn that I am a grisly Egoist?"
