Nor with all his
astuteness could he decide how far he was being managed by Mrs.
Staggchase, or led on by Miss Merrivale. He went about in a state of
continual astonishment at the extent to which he had committed himself
with the latter, and fell into that dangerous mental condition where
one seems passively to regard his own actions rather than to direct
them. Rangely had been so long settled in the conviction that he was to
marry Ethel Mott, even the not infrequent rebuffs of that lady
producing in his mind only temporary misgiving, that his present doubts
bewildered him. He was less of a coxcomb than might seem to follow from
this statement, albeit there was no timidity and little burning passion
in his feeling toward her. His was simply the cool masculine assurance
of a man selfish enough to regard even love in a cold-blooded manner.
He approved of his own choice socially, financially, and aesthetically;
and since he loved himself rather more for having selected Ethel, he
fell into the not unnatural error of supposing himself to be in love
with her.
His entanglement with Miss Merrivale, on the other hand, was largely a
matter of vanity. What had begun as an idle flirtation, designed to
kill the leisure of summer days in the mountains, was continued from a
half-conscious fear that he should appear at a disadvantage by breaking
it off.
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