He bored her, she despised him for his
want of intelligence and enterprise. That a man with all this wealth and
endless opportunity should waste his life in such fashion was to her a
thing intolerable. She knew if she had half his chance, that she would
make her name ring from one end of Europe to the other. In short,
Beatrice held Owen as deeply in contempt as her sister Elizabeth,
studying him from another point of view, held him in reverence. And
putting aside any human predilections, Beatrice would never have married
a man whom she despised. She respected herself too much.
Owen Davies saw all this as through a glass darkly, and in his own slow
way cast about for a means of drawing near. He discovered that Beatrice
was passionately fond of learning, and also that she had no means to
obtain the necessary books. So he threw open his library to her; it
was one of the best in Wales. He did more; he gave orders to a London
bookseller to forward him every new book of importance that appeared
in certain classes of literature, and all of these he placed at her
disposal, having first carefully cut the leaves with his own hand.
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