It must also be allowed that, in some respects, Evelyn was too young and
inexperienced thoroughly to appreciate all that was most truly lovable
and attractive in Maltravers. At four and twenty she would, perhaps,
have felt no fear mingled with her respect for him; but seventeen and six
and thirty is a wide interval! She never felt that there was that
difference in years until she had met Legard, and then at once she
comprehended it. With Legard she had moved on equal terms; he was not
too wise, too high for her every-day thoughts. He less excited her
imagination, less attracted her reverence. But, somehow or other, that
voice which proclaimed her power, those eyes which never turned from
hers, went nearer to her heart. As Evelyn had once said to Caroline, "It
was a great enigma!"--her own feelings were a mystery to her, and she
reclined by the "Golden Waterfalls" without tracing her likeness in the
glass of the pool below.

Maltravers appeared again at the rectory. He joined their parties by
day, and his evenings were spent with them as of old. In this I know not
precisely what were his motives--perhaps he did not know them himself.
It might be that his pride was roused; it might be that he could not
endure the notion that Lord Vargrave should guess his secret by an
absence almost otherwise unaccountable,--he could not patiently bear to
give Vargrave that triumph; it might be that, in the sternness of his
self-esteem, he imagined he had already conquered all save affectionate
interest in Evelyn's fate, and trusted too vainly to his own strength;
and it might be, also, that he could not resist the temptation of seeing
if Evelyn were contented with her lot, and if Vargrave were worthy of the
blessing that awaited him. Whether one of these or all united made him
resolve to brave his danger, or whether, after all, he yielded to a
weakness, or consented to what--invited by Evelyn herself--was almost a
social necessity, the reader and not the narrator shall decide.