He threw her hands rudely from him, turned hastily and left the library.
Enda sat down and covered her face with her bruised and benumbed fingers, but she could not shut out the sight of something that astonished and frightened her--of something that made her shudder from head to foot, and crouch down in her chair cowed and humiliated. Hitherto she had fancied that she thoroughly understood and sternly governed her heart--that conscience and reason ruled it; but within the past hour it had suddenly risen in dangerous rebellion, thrown off its allegiance to all things else, and insolently proclaimed St. Elmo Murray its king. She could not analyze her new feelings, they would not obey the summons to the tribunal of her outraged self-respect; and with bitter shame and reproach and abject contrition, she realized that she had begun to love the sinful, blasphemous man who had insulted her revered grandfather, and who barely tolerated her presence in his house.
This danger had never once occurred to her, for she had always believed that love could only exist where high esteem and unbounded reverence prepared the soil; and she was well aware that this man's character had from the first hour of their acquaintance excited her aversion and dread. Ten days before she had positively disliked and feared him; now, to her amazement, she found him throned in her heart, defying ejection. The sudden revulsion bewildered and mortified her, and she resolved to crush out the feeling at once, cost what it might. When Mr. Murray had asked if she loved any one else better than Mr. Leigh, she thought, nay she knew, she answered truly in the negative. But now, when she attempted to compare the two men, such a strange, yearning tenderness pleaded for St. Elmo, and palliated his grave faults, that the girl's self-accusing severity wrung a groan from the very depths of her soul.
When the sad discovery was first made, conscience lifted its hands in horror, because of the man's reckless wickedness; but after a little while a still louder clamor was raised by womanly pride, which bled at the thought of tolerating a love unsought, unvalued; and with this fierce rush of reinforcements to aid conscience, the insurgent heart seemed destined to summary subjugation. Until this hour, although conscious of many faults, she had not supposed that there was anything especially contemptible in her character; but now the feeling of self-abasement was unutterably galling. She despised herself most cordially, and the consistent dignity of life which she had striven to attain appeared hopelessly shattered.
While the battle of reason versus love was at its height, Mrs. Murray put her head in the room and asked: "Edna! Where are you, Edna?"