As for Zenobia, I saw no occasion to give myself any trouble. With her
native strength, and her experience of the world, she could not be
supposed to need any help of mine. Nevertheless, I was really generous
enough to feel some little interest likewise for Zenobia. With all her
faults (which might have been a great many besides the abundance that I
knew of), she possessed noble traits, and a heart which must, at least,
have been valuable while new. And she seemed ready to fling it away as
uncalculatingly as Priscilla herself. I could not but suspect that, if
merely at play with Hollingsworth, she was sporting with a power which
she did not fully estimate. Or if in earnest, it might chance, between
Zenobia's passionate force and his dark, self-delusive egotism, to turn
out such earnest as would develop itself in some sufficiently tragic
catastrophe, though the dagger and the bowl should go for nothing in it.
Meantime, the gossip of the Community set them down as a pair of
lovers. They took walks together, and were not seldom encountered in
the wood-paths: Hollingsworth deeply discoursing, in tones solemn and
sternly pathetic; Zenobia, with a rich glow on her cheeks, and her eyes
softened from their ordinary brightness, looked so beautiful, that had
her companion been ten times a philanthropist, it seemed impossible but
that one glance should melt him back into a man. Oftener than anywhere
else, they went to a certain point on the slope of a pasture,
commanding nearly the whole of our own domain, besides a view of the
river, and an airy prospect of many distant hills. The bond of our
Community was such, that the members had the privilege of building
cottages for their own residence within our precincts, thus laying a
hearthstone and fencing in a home private and peculiar to all desirable
extent, while yet the inhabitants should continue to share the
advantages of an associated life. It was inferred that Hollingsworth
and Zenobia intended to rear their dwelling on this favorite spot.
I mentioned those rumors to Hollingsworth in a playful way.
"Had you consulted me," I went on to observe, "I should have
recommended a site farther to the left, just a little withdrawn into
the wood, with two or three peeps at the prospect among the trees. You
will be in the shady vale of years long before you can raise any better
kind of shade around your cottage, if you build it on this bare slope."
"But I offer my edifice as a spectacle to the world," said
Hollingsworth, "that it may take example and build many another like
it. Therefore, I mean to set it on the open hillside."