The Argosy — page 167: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

154 Lottie’s “Yes.” himself as he really was, becoming a sort of conscience to him; than which there is hardly a more direct road to aversion. Lottie Craven was always ready to support Harry: she endorsed his views and opinions; they were the views and opinions of society ; and when the curate came down with a heavy hand upon some fashionable fallacy, and shattered a sophism, all unconscious of discourtesy, she would rebuke him by her silence or lead him on to give voice to his unvarnished creeds in a still more ungainly manner. Harry thought very highly of her for this: he liked pride in a girl: he liked that she should look as by nght over the heads of men who were obliged to work ; and that, with a certain subtle difference of manner, she should make it understood that the companion of her choice was the man to whom belonged by birth and by design the gifts of fortune. One may approve of the bee, but the butterfly is naturally to be preferred. It was different with regard to Eve: she was less well versed in social distinctions, and showed plainly enough that the curate’s society was pleasing to her. She deferred to his opinion, she sought for instruction at his hands, she entered into his views, carried out his plans, obeyed his instructions. Eve! When Harry’s thoughts turned in that direction they became harassing to him, and so he set them aside and returned to the contemplation of Lottie, her pretty looks, her manners, her brightness, her six thousand a-year ; which contem- plation naturally brought him in due course of time to a proposal, very eloquently, very confidently made, and to which Lottie said Yes,” in a grave, considerate way, without blushes or Deng, or any girlish nonsense of any kind. He liked that; as he afterwards assured himself, any vehement demonstration of tenderness would have been unpleasing to him. ‘* Yes,” with serene, somewhat penetrating and questioning eyes raised to his face; almost with a smile; with a little hesitation as to the words, a little quiver of the lips; with a decided withdrawal of the hand he had taken in his; but still ‘* Yes.” Friendship is rare amongst women ; that supreme confidence which a woman feels in a man who is her friend is not often felt by one woman towards another: but there had been a great deal of this con- fidence, a great deal of that which is very like friendship, between Eve Dacre and Lottie Craven until the day when Harry Davenant proposed to Lottie, and Lottie said ‘“‘ Yes.” And then a great gulf opened between them. Not that any such division was acknow- ledged in so many words. Eve might have accused her friend of having robbed her of a treasure which had been all her own, of having stolen in upon her with gentle words, tender professions and loving eyes, and robbed her; of having entered into the secret chamber of her heart to scatter its most precious possessions. And Lottie might have replied that to have refused the faithless lover of her friend would not have rendered him less faithless; and that there was no ECORNICLOOKS, (Ev) m