He went away with vanity flattered by the sense of having been appealed
to concerning Margaret, and then he began to chafe at what she had said
of Wetmore's honesty, apropos of her wish that he still had a class
himself. Did she mean, confound her? that he was insincere, and would let
Miss Vance suppose she had more talent than she really had? The more
Beaton thought of this, the more furious he became, and the more he was
convinced that something like it had been unconsciously if not
consciously in her mind. He framed some keen retorts, to the general
effect that with the atmosphere of illusion preserved so completely at
home, Miss Vance hardly needed it in her art studies. Having just
determined never to go near Mrs. Horn's Thursdays again, he decided to go
once more, in order to plant this sting in her capacious but somewhat
callous bosom; and he planned how he would lead the talk up to the point
from which he should launch it.
In the mean time he felt the need of some present solace, such as only
unqualified worship could give him; a cruel wish to feel his power in
some direction where, even if it were resisted, it could not be overcome,
drove him on. That a woman who was to Beaton the embodiment of
artificiality should intimate, however innocently--the innocence made it
all the worse--that he was less honest than Wetmore, whom he knew to be
so much more honest, was something that must be retaliated somewhere
before his self-respect could be restored.
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