The man seemed stolid and cold
indeed, but it was the coldness of a volcano. His heart was a-fire.
All the human forces in him, all the energies of his sturdy life, had
concentrated themselves in a single passion for the woman who was so
near and yet so far from him. He had never drawn upon the store, had
never frittered his heart away. This woman, strange and unusual as
it may seem, was absolutely the first whose glance or voice had ever
stirred his blood. His passion for her had grown slowly; for years
it had been growing, ever since the grey-eyed girl on the brink of
womanhood had conducted him to his castle home. It was no fancy, no
light desire to pass with the year which brought it. Owen had little
imagination, that soil from which loves spring with the rank swiftness
of a tropic bloom to fade at the first chill breath of change. His
passion was an unalterable fact. It was rooted like an oak on our stiff
English soil, its fibres wrapped his heart and shot his being through,
and if so strong a gale should rise that it must fall, then he too would
be overthrown.
For years now he had thought of little else than Beatrice.
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