He had read of women
who used it as a lure. If it were Charlotte's special weapon he was
quite willing to be brought to submission by it. After all, there was
piquancy in the situation; for to most men, love sought and hardly won
is far sweeter than love freely given.
Yet of all the women whom he had known, Charlotte Sandal was the least
approachable. She was fertile in preventing an opportunity; and if the
opportunity came, she was equally fertile in spoiling it. But Julius had
patience; and patience is the art and secret of hoping. A woman cannot
always be on guard, and he believed in not losing heart, and in waiting.
Sooner or later, the happy moment when success would be possible was
certain to arrive.
One day in the early part of September, the squire asked his wife for
all the house-servants she could spare. "A few more hands will bring
home the harvest to-night," he said; "and it would be a great thing to
get it in without a drop of rain."
So the men and maids went off to the wheat-fields, as if they were going
to a frolic; and there was a happy sense of freedom, with the picnicky
dinner, and the general air of things being left to themselves about the
house. After an unusually merry lunch, Julius proposed a walk to the
harvest-field, and Sophia and Charlotte eagerly agreed to it.
It was a joy to be out of doors under such a sky. The intense,
repressing greens of summer were now subdued and shaded.
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