If Esther were really on her way to meet Will Starling, he
would do more harm than good by appearing to pry.
Esther was the flaw in Mark's crystal clear world. When a year ago they
had quarrelled over his avowed dislike of Will Starling, she had gone
back to her solitary walks and he conscious, painfully conscious, that
she regarded him as a young prig, had with that foolish pride of youth
resolved to be so far as she was concerned what she supposed him to be.
His admiration for the Greys and the Fords had driven her into jeering
at them; throughout the year Mark and she had been scarcely polite to
each other even in public. The Rector and Miriam probably excused Mark's
rudeness whenever he let himself give way to it, because their sister
did not spare either of them, and they were made aware with exasperating
insistence of the dullness of the country and of the dreariness of
everybody who lived in the neighbourhood. Yet, Mark could never achieve
that indifference to her attitude either toward himself or toward other
people that he wished to achieve. It was odd that this evening he should
have beheld her in that relation to the wind, because in his thoughts
about her she always appeared to him like the wind, restlessly sighing
and fluttering round a comfortable house.
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