Sink or Swim? , Volume II

Arthur was not far wrong when he averred that his sister Rhoda was the last girl in the world to make a successful _début_ in London society. Shyness -- being entirely uncomprehended and believed in -- is too often there mistaken for stupidity, or, at best, for a disinclination to be pleased and to be "jolly. " Looking beneath the surface is too long a process for the superficial observers of the present day; summary condemnation takes little time, and lynch-law, in the shape of something very like ostracism, is speedily pronounced. So Rhoda Vavasour -- whose mother had been guilty of that terrible social blunder, namely, the non-keeping up of her connections -- found herself, although rather pretty and decidedly "nice," quite thrown away in the West-end world. Under these circumstances, and feeling -- gentle though she was, and humble-minded -- a little mortified and _délaissée_, Rhoda's heart naturally turned again towards the man who, being but a country rector, looked up to, loved, and appreciated her. For her -- almost partnerless, and left, whether at ball, opera, or party, a good deal to her own resources and reflections -- the memory of George Wallingford, together with her pleasant country duties and avocations, was as a gleam of summer sunshine, a green oasis in the peopled desert of her uncongenial life. When, before her departure from Gillingham, the rector, meeting her by chance as she was leaving the door of a poor dependent on her kindness, stopped his horse, and by a few meaning words, and looks more suggestive still, conveyed to her the knowledge that neither time nor absence would erase her image from his heart, he of course committed this disloyal act with eyes wide open to its impropriety. He knew, ay better than did Arthur Vavasour, that he was, in thus secretly tampering with a young girl's affections, committing a sin against his neighbour.

That sin might not, viewed abstractedly, be so heinous as that which Rhoda's brother was, with equal audacity, committing; but in reality the one man's guilt was little inferior to the other; both yielded to such temptation as was within their reach, and the consequence in either case was the punishment that had been so deservedly incurred.