And what an effect her stroll and chat with him had had upon her! She had been, as she told him (more confession), plunged into the black depths of despondency; and yet within five minutes, owing to his sympathetic attitude--owing to her feeling that he understood her and sympathized with her and applauded her boldness in standing out against her father’s prejudices in carrying out that form of hypocrisy known as mourning--she had been drawn out of the depths and made to feel that there might yet be a place for her in the world. The result of her consideration of the whole of this question--the most interesting that had ever come within her ken--was to make her feel that she would like to have it in her power to do something for that man--something important--something that would make people see that he was not the brainless spendthrift which so many people, on quite insufficient evidence, assumed him to be. She was perfectly well aware of the fact that she was not in love with him, and she felt that she understood him so well that she could not be mistaken in perceiving that neither was he in love with her. She had always been an observant girl, and she had had several opportunities of diagnosing--of subjecting to the interpretation of her mental spectroscope, so to speak--the various phases incidental to the progress of the phenomena of falling in love. She had never actually been in love herself, but several men had been in love with her, and with the exception of her music master at that finishing school, whose methods were very pronounced, all her incipient lovers had behaved alike, and she could see no difference between the way their love affected them and the way it affected some of the living things of the farm. The ingratiating tones of voice, the alternate little shynesses and boldnesses, the irritation at the approach of any others of the same sex, and the overweening desire to appear at their best before the object of their worship--all these foolish, pretty ways incidental to the condition known as being in love, she had observed in her incipient lovers, in common with other animals; and her observance of them enabled her to be always on her guard.