triumphant.

When they were near the house, and she was about to turn back again
toward the others, still enjoying the summer air, he said. "Will you
come with me into the hall? I want to ask you about something I noticed
there." This was only so far true that he had found the antlers which he
remembered hung there an excuse to stand face to face with her a few
moments longer, and to talk with her, and have her answers even about
these trivial things all to himself before the others came. It was of no
use to pretend to himself now that disappointed ambition was the cause
of his chagrin at losing Elizabeth; his feeling was not chagrin, it was
something like fury. He had never denied himself anything, he would not
deny himself now. As to this woman who the higher he found, and the more
he admired her, the more she eluded him, and with every unconscious
movement drew tighter the chain that bound him; he had a purpose
concerning her. He was not capable of deep or continued devotion, but
when he had an object in view nothing mattered to him but that. If he
gained it, doubtless something else would absorb him; if he
lost--blackness filled this blank, but here he had resolved not to lose.

As he stood in the hall with Elizabeth beside the open door and watched
her delicate face and perceived the readiness with which she answered
his questions in full, as if glad of so simple a subject, he said to
himself, "That fancy of hers for me was lighter than I thought. She has
not yet quaffed the nectar of love--not yet--not yet." He gave little
attention to her story of the shooting of the stag, Stephen's feat when
a boy of fourteen; she did not of course know as much of the history of
the Archdales as did the petted young beauty to whom he had been talking
before dinner, and she in the midst of her fluent account wondered in
her own mind where she had heard it all, and remembered that it had been