foreshadowing of an unwelcome regard which she understood better
than he did.

While his manner for a few weeks past, and especially his words
during their recent interview, made it clear that he was not the
rough, awkward rustic she had first imagined him to be, he still
seemed very crude and angular. In spite of her love for Vinton Arnold,
which had not abated in the least, he had ceased to be her ideal
man. Nevertheless, his refined elegance, his quiet self-restraint,
his knowledge of the niceties and proprieties of the world to which
she felt she belonged by right, did combine to produce an ideal
in her mind of which she was but half conscious, and beside which
Roger appeared in a repulsive light. She shrank with instinctive
distaste from his very strength and vehemence, and feared that she
would never be safe from interviews like the one just described,
and from awkward, half-concealed gallantries. Even the flowers
he had set out became odious, for they represented a sentiment the
very thought of which inspired aversion.

A coquette can soon destroy the strong instinct of sacredness and
exclusiveness with which an unperverted girl guards her heart from
all save the one who seems to have the divine right and unexplained
power to pass all barriers. Even while fancy free, unwelcome advances
are resented almost as wrongs and intrusions by the natural woman;
but after a real, or even an ideal image has taken possession of
the heart and imagination, repugnance is often the sole reward of
other unfortunate suitors, and this dislike usually will be felt
and manifested in a proportion corresponding with the obtrusiveness
of the attentions, their sincerity, and the want of tact with which
they are offered.