Now the walk from the Aberg down through the woods is a peculiarly delightful one and, even in the season at Carlsbad, not over-crowded by people. Henry Fordyce felt duly elated at the prospect, and Mrs. Howard had an air of pensive mischief in her violet eyes. Lord Fordyce, who had been accustomed for years to making speeches for his party, and was known as a ready orator, found himself rather silent, and even a little nervous, for the first hundred yards or so. She looked so bewitching, he thought, in her fresh white linen, showing up the round peachiness of her young cheeks, and those curling, childish, brown lashes making their shadow. He was overcome with a desire to kiss her. She was so supremely healthy and delectable. He felt he had been altogether a fool in his estimate of the serious necessities of life hitherto. Woman was now one of them--and this woman supremely so. Why, if she could be freed from bonds, should she not become his wife? But he felt it might be wiser not to be too precipitate about suggesting the thing to her. She had certainly given him no indication that she would receive the idea favorably, and appeared to be of the type of character which could not be coerced. He felt very glad Michael Arranstoun had not responded to his pressing request to join him. It would be far better that that irritatingly attractive specimen of manhood should not step upon the scene, until he himself had some definite hope of affairs being satisfactorily settled.
They began their talk upon the lightest subjects, and gradually drifted into one of the discussions of emotions in the abstract which are so fascinating--and so dangerous--and which require skill to direct and continue.
Mrs. Howard held that pleasure could alone come from harmony of body and spirit, while Lord Fordyce maintained that wild discords could also produce it, and that it could not be defined as governed by any law.
"One is sometimes full of pleasure even against one's will," he said. "Every spiritual principle and conviction may be outraged, and yet for some unaccountable reason pleasure remains."
Mrs. Howard opened her eyes wide as if at a sudden thought.
"Yes," she said. "I wish it were not true what you say, but it is--and it is a great injustice."