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Updated: June 2, 2025
Having come through a period of low spirits, caused by an acute consciousness of her own littleness and inferiority, Ephie so far recovered her self-confidence that she was able to look at her divinity when she met him; and soon after this, she made the intoxicating discovery that not only did he return her look, but that he also took notice of her, and deliberately singled her out with his gaze.
Naturally, he did not understand how highly he was favoured by her; he knew neither the depth of her affection for Ephie, nor the exact degree of contempt in which she held the young men who dangled there on a Sunday poor fools who were growing fat on emotion and silly ideas, when they should have been taking plain, hard fare at college.
"Ssh! be a good girl, Ephie," he replied as though speaking to a child. "Come with me." An inborn politeness struggled with Ephie's dread. "I can't. I don't know her name," she whispered. But she let him draw her forward to where Louise was standing; and she held out her hand. "Miss ?" she said in a small voice, and waited for the name to be filled in.
Ephie turned scarlet, and jumping up from the sofa, so that all the blossoms fell from her hair at once, stamped her foot. "Maurice Guest! How dare you!" she cried angrily, and, to his surprise, the young man saw that she had tears in her eyes.
Ephie cried with renewed bitterness. "I want to go home." But Maurice did not pay any attention to her. He was watching Louise, with a growing dismay. For she continued to laugh, in a breathless way, with a catch in the throat, which made the laughter sound like sobbing. On his approaching her, she tried to check herself, but without success.
But if, on some such occasion, Johanna said to her: "Where ARE your thoughts, Ephie?" she would only laugh, and answer, with a hug: "Wool-gathering, you dear old bumble-bee!"
Ephie, who, in the interval, had upbraided herself incessantly, was none the less, now the moment had come, about to pass as before even more frigidly. But this time Schilsky raised his hat, with a tentative smile, and, in order not to appear childish, she bowed ever so slightly.
Johanna would as soon have thought of herself being untruthful as of doubting Ephie, whom she had never known to tell a lie; and if she did sometimes feel jealous of all the new claims made on her little sister's attention, such a feeling was only temporary, and she was, for the most part, content to see Ephie content.
Ephie made an ineffectual effort to get possession of it again, but he held it above her reach, and saying: "Wait a minute," ran up the steps. He came back without it, and throwing a swift glance round him, took the young girl's arm, and walked her off at a brisk pace to the woods. She made a few, faint protests. But he replied: "You and I have something to say to each other, little girl."
Dove also made no further effort to converse connectedly, but his silence was of a conciliatory kind, and, as they advanced along the PROMENADE, he could not deny himself the pleasure of drawing the pretty, perverse child's attention to the crossings, the ruts in the road, the best bits of pavement, with a: "Walk you here, Miss Ephie," "Take care," "Allow me," himself meanwhile dancing from one side of the footpath to the other, until the young girl was almost distracted.
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