Goose of Hermogenes Read Online Free PDF Page B

the elder generation to further her interests. Someone must, however, have obtained an invitation for her, perhaps simply as a courtesy due to cousins of the blood, however remote; or even partly on the ground of her sheer harmlessness and inability to rival more eligible young women.
    What then must have been the general consternation, albeit wisely masked, when, on her being presented to the Duke Oriole, she was immediately marked out as his special favourite!  From that moment he interested himself in no one else, and took no account of the elaborate festivities arranged in his honour, but evaded them whenever he could in order to wander off with her.
    One hesitates to use the phrase ‘love at first sight;’ and not merely on account of its triteness, for the attenuated skein linking them was untouched by that tragic tension which, until this time at least, has always in the West been associated with romantic love. Indeed, it is doubtful whether even the Orient could provide a counterpart to this strange ‘elective affinity;’ though its origin may be sought in that hidden impact of the Levant on Europe, from which the Magian consciousness arises. Plato, perhaps, was looking eastward when he wrote of two beings contained in a single sphere to form a hermaphrodite whole, the androgynous egg. It seemed that Oriole and Corolla were in some sense the same person, a kind of Euphorion, and for this reason their link was without passion, a vegetative growth; or as if two clouds floating towards one another should coalesce-yet with something of apocalypse, as though mutually and for each, the other side of the moon were suddenly revealed. And since this was so, no intrigue however persistent, and no convention however strict, could finally keep them apart.
    Corolla had not come to this visit primed with the well-defined ambitions of many of the other guests, and had no thought of attempting to make herself particularly alluring, still less of monopolising the Duke’s attention. Yet the bond of sympathy was immediately established between them; though she could only guess at what formed it – whether the fact that they were both orphans and both of the same age, and that they shared some unexpected facial resemblance, had anything to do with it, she could not tell. She only knew that when she saw him, his rank and possessions meant nothing to her – she forgot all about them; and would equally have forgotten their lack, had she met him, a forlorn beggar, on some outlandish shore.
    The celebrations at the Hall were not only social in the strict sense but religious also, and on Sunday morning the private chapel was full. Corolla sensed a certain tension in the atmosphere which she could neither define nor explain; Aunt Augusta seemed to be in her most dictatorial mood; and an instance occurred to justify the priest’s apprehension of her, for on his making a slight slip in the ritual, she had no hesitation in loudly correcting him before the assembled company. Cousin Alicia, also, gave Corolla a very hard look as they were coming out of the chapel; and this was one of the first intimations she received that the Duke’s preference for her was not approved. She realised, of course, that it could not have gone unremarked; no doubt there had already been some gossiping in boudoirs; perhaps she had been branded as ‘scheming’ or ‘a dark horse’, as the saying goes, when in fact she had done nothing but flow unresisting with the tide of fate. There may even have been established overnight two rival camps – one composed of Alicia, her mother the Countess Astarte and their supporters; the other, of those, who, though envious of Alicia yet had little chance themselves, and so were inclined to side with Corolla against her from sheer desperation.
    Meanwhile, the companionship of Corolla had become Oriole’s chief delight, and they would roam together for hours through his extensive grounds, or go exploring in the ancient