She now began to wish that she had taken a different course. As
Van Berg pursued his present tactics, her feminine intuition was
not so dull but that she was led to believe he wished to make her
acquaintance. Of course there was, to her mind, but one explanation
of this fact--he was becoming fascinated, like so many others.
"If I were only on speaking and flirting terms," she thought (the
two relations were about synonymous in her estimation), "I might
draw him on to a point which would give me a chance of punishing
him far more than is now possible by sullenly keeping aloof. As
it is, it looks to these people here as if he had jilted me instead
of I him, and that I am sulking over it."
But she had entangled herself in the snarl of her own previous
words and manner. She had charged her mother and cousin to permit
no overtures of peace; and once or twice, when mine host, in his
good-natured, off-hand manner, had sought to introduce them, she
had been so blind and deaf to his purpose as to appear positively
rude. Her repugnance to the artist had become a generally recognized
fact; and she had built up such a barrier that she could not break
it down without asking for more help than was agreeable to her
pride.
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