Her mother was
proud of her beauty and her supposed learning, and loved, when she
looked up from her work, to let her eyes rest upon her tall and
handsome child, whose cheeks were flushed with eager interest as she
bent her graceful head over her book. But Saul Matchin nourished a
vague anger and jealousy against her. He felt that his love was nothing
to her; that she was too pretty and too clever to be at home in his
poor house; and yet he dared not either reproach her or appeal to her
affections. His heart would fill with grief and bitterness as he gazed
at her devouring the brilliant pages of some novel of what she imagined
high life, unconscious of his glance, which would travel from her
neatly shod feet up to her hair, frizzed and banged down to her
eyebrows, "making her look," he thought, "more like a Scotch poodle-dog
than an honest girl." He hated those books which, he fancied, stole
away her heart from her home. He had once picked up one of them where
she had left it; but the high-flown style seemed as senseless to him as
the words of an incantation, and he had flung it down more bewildered
than ever.
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