'Give her a comfortable cry and
a few moral maxims.'
'I will,' she said. 'You love me, Caseldy?'
'Love you? I? Your own? What assurance would you have?'
'None, dear friend.'
Here was a woman easily deceived.
In the hearts of certain men, owing to an intellectual contempt of easy
dupes, compunction in deceiving is diminished by the lightness of their
task; and that soft confidence which will often, if but passingly, bid
betrayers reconsider the charms of the fair soul they are abandoning,
commends these armoured knights to pursue with redoubled earnest the
fruitful ways of treachery. Their feelings are warm for their prey,
moreover; and choosing to judge their victim by the present warmth of
their feelings, they can at will be hurt, even to being scandalized, by a
coldness that does not waken one suspicion of them. Jealousy would have
a chance of arresting, for it is not impossible to tease them back to
avowed allegiance; but sheer indifference also has a stronger hold on
them than a, dull, blind trustfulness. They hate the burden it imposes;
the blind aspect is only touching enough to remind them of the burden,
and they hate if for that, and for the enormous presumption of the belief
that they are everlastingly bound to such an imbecile. She walks about
with her eyes shut, expecting not to stumble, and when she does, am I to
blame? The injured man asks it in the course of his reasoning.
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