"I doubt the charm of the latter individual, Vic! You must have a
little more patience with this girl, and the confidence will come by
degrees, if you don't lose your self-command with her; but I'd
advise you to be careful. The way in which you have been talking to
me now gives an impression of--well, almost brutality, that I didn't
think was in you."
I laughed contemptuously.
"Oh, you needn't be afraid of the word; I know there is a lot of it
in me. It's just that knowledge that enables me to keep it under. I
know if I had not kept myself, for the sake of the work, out of it,
that I should have led a brutish existence. However, you needn't
think that I am going to frighten Lucia. I have had such a deuce of
a lot of practice in patience and restraint, and all those fine
things, that I am quite sure of myself when I am with her. But as to
gaining her confidence, that is impossible before the ceremony, I
believe. She has been brought up in that monstrous idea, like the
rest of our fashionable girls, that the man into whose possession
she is to give herself utterly with the ceremony, up to the last
moment before it, is to be treated with the most absolute reserve.
The contrast is too ludicrous--driven to the point of exaggeration
to which they drive it. In Lucia's eyes an unusual, an unfashionable
word, no matter how great the necessity for it, is a crime.
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