For Ainsley it held a deep attraction.
Through the summer evenings, as the sun set, he would sit on the brick
terrace and watch the fish leaping, and listen to the venerable
bull-frogs croaking false alarms of rain. Indeed, after he met Polly
Kirkland, staring moodily at the lake became his favorite form of
exercise. With a number of other men, Ainsley was very much in love with
Miss Kirkland, and unprejudiced friends thought that if she were to
choose any of her devotees, Ainsley should be that one. Ainsley heartily
agreed in this opinion, but in persuading Miss Kirkland to share it he
had not been successful. This was partly his own fault; for when he
dared to compare what she meant to him with what he had to offer her he
became a mass of sodden humility. Could he have known how much Polly
Kirkland envied and admired his depth of feeling, entirely apart from
the fact that she herself inspired that feeling, how greatly she wished
to care for him in the way he cared for her, life, even alone in the
silences of Lone Lake, would have been a beautiful and blessed thing.
But he was so sure she was the most charming and most wonderful girl in
all the world, and he an unworthy and despicable being, that when the
lady demurred, he faltered, and his pleading, at least to his own ears,
carried no conviction.
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