It seemed so strange that she should have been so ready to run away, so as to escape this Adrian Darcy; and now the brightest heaven of which she could dream was his friendship--for his love, after she understood him, she could hardly hope.
"How can he care for a child like me," she was accustomed to ask herself, "uninformed, inexperienced, ignorant? He is so great and so noble, how can he care for me?"
She did not know that her sweet humility, her graceful shyness, her _naïveté_, her entire freedom from all taint of worldliness, was more precious to him, more charming, than all the accomplishments she could have displayed.
"How can I ever have thought that I loved Claude?" she said to herself. "How can I have been so blind? My heart never used to beat more quickly for his coming. If I had had the same liberty, the same amusements and pleasures which other girls have, I should never have cared for him. It was only because he broke the monotony of my life, and gave me something to think of."
Then in her own mind she contrasted the two men--Adrian, so calm, so dignified, so noble in thought, word, and deed, and so loyal, so upright; Claude, all impetuosity, fire, recklessness and passion--not to be trusted, not to be relied upon. There was never a greater difference of character surely than between these two men.
She learned to look with Adrian's eyes, to think with his mind; and she became a noble woman.
Life at Bergheim was very pleasant; there was no monotony, no dreariness now. Her first thought when she woke in the morning, was that she should see Adrian, hear him speak, perhaps go out with him. Quite unconsciously to herself, he became the centre of her thoughts and ideas--the soul of her soul, the life of her life. She did not know that she loved him; what she called her "love" for Claude had been something so different--all made up of gratified vanity and love of change. The beautiful affection rapidly mastering her was so great and reverent, it filled her soul with light, her heart with music, her mind with beauty. She did not know that it was love that kept her awake throughout the night thinking of him, bringing back to her mind every word he had spoken--that made her always anxious to look well.