It was only by reason of the business he came
upon that he was received at all. Nevertheless he paid his court
to the ladies of the Manor, as a gentleman anxious to remove their
prejudices and win their good opinion.
He once, and but once, essayed to approach Amelie with gallantry,
a hair-breadth only beyond the rigid boundary-line of ordinary
politeness, when he received a repulse so quick, so unspoken and
invisible, that he could not tell in what it consisted, yet he felt
it like a sudden paralysis of his powers of pleasing. He cared not
again to encounter the quick glance of contempt and aversion which
for an instant flashed in the eyes of Amelie when she caught the
drift of his untimely admiration.
A woman is never so Rhadamanthean in her justice, and so quick in
her execution of it, as when she is proud and happy in her love for
another man: she is then indignant at every suggestion implying any
doubt of the strength, purity, and absoluteness of her devotion.
De Pean ground his teeth in silent wrath at this quiet but
unequivocal repulse, and vowed a bitter vow that Amelie should ere
long repent in sackcloth and ashes for the wound inflicted upon his
vanity and still more upon his cupidity.
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