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“What a shame of people to say such things!” she exclaimed, looking up indignantly. “No, I certainly don’t believe them, but I am glad to know about it all, for it shows what disagreeable gossip there might have been about Lilias had her name been mixed up with it.”

“Yes, indeed, but my dear child, you are scorching your face to cinders – you should not play such pranks with your complexion, though that brawny pink skin of yours is a very good kind to wear, and quite as pretty in my opinion, as Lilias’s lilies and roses – but what was I saying? Oh, yes, by-the-bye, I do wish you would tell me – I shall be as discreet as possible —is Lilias engaged to him?”

Mary hesitated a moment, then she said, gently:

“Dear Mrs Greville, I wish you wouldn’t ask me, for I can’t tell you.”

“Ah, well, never mind,” said her hostess, good-naturedly. “You’ll tell me whenever you can, no doubt, and I hope it will all come right in the end, however it stands at present.”

“Thank you,” said Mary, with sincerity.

Then they went on to talk of other things. Mrs Greville described to Mary the “young people” who were staying with her, two girls and their brother, cousins of Mr Greville’s first wife, and counselled her to make herself as pretty and charming as possible, to fascinate young Morpeth, who would be a conquest by no means to be despised.

“He is nothing at present,” she said; “he has a thousand a year, and his sisters the same between them. They are orphans and have had no settled home since their mother’s death. Vance Morpeth is talking of going into the cavalry for a few years, but his elder sister is against it, and he will be too old if he isn’t quick about it. They have been abroad all the winter. Now remember, Mary, you are to do your best to captivate him, unless, indeed,” she went on, as Mary was turning to her with some smiling rejoinder – “unless you have some little secret of your own too, with that haughty-looking Mr Cheviott for its hero.”

The smile died out of Mary’s face.

“Don’t joke about that man, please, Mrs Greville,” she said, beseechingly. “You do not know how I dislike him. I have never regretted anything more in my whole life than dancing with him that night.”

And just then the time-piece striking five, she was glad to make the excuse that she would be late for dinner unless she hurried up-stairs to get her things unpacked, for fashionable hours had not yet penetrated to Uxley.

“Yes, go, my dear,” said Mrs Greville. “Fancy, we have been a whole hour talking over the fire. I hear the Morpeths coming in – they must have been a very long walk, and it’s quite dark outside. I cannot understand why people can’t go walks in the morning instead of putting off till late in the afternoon, and then catching colds and all sorts of disagreeables. Run off, Mary. I dare say you would rather not see them till you are dressed.”

Which Mary, who cared very little for seeing “them” at all, rightly interpreted as meaning, “I don’t want Mr Morpeth to see you till you are nicely dressed, and looking to the best advantage.”

Her powers of looking her best depended much more on herself than on her clothes, for her choice of attire was limited enough. But the suppressed excitement under which she was labouring had given unusual brilliance to Mary’s at all times beautiful brown eyes, and a certain vivacity to her manner, in general somewhat too staid and sober for her age. So she looked more than “pretty” this evening, though her dress was nothing but a many-times-washed white muslin, brightened up here and there by a little rose-coloured ribbon.

“I thought you told me that it was not the pretty Miss Western that you expected?” said Mr Morpeth to Mrs Greville in a low voice, after the introductions had been accomplished.

Mrs Greville glanced up to the young man as she answered. There was a puzzled expression in his innocent-looking eyes; she saw that he was quite in earnest, and, indeed, she felt sure he was too little, of a man of the world to have intended his inquiry for a compliment.

“Does that mean that you think this one pretty?” she asked.

“Of course it does. I think she’s awfully pretty, don’t you?” he said, frankly.

Mrs Greville felt well pleased, but the announcement of dinner interrupted any more talk between them. Mr Morpeth had to take Mrs Greville, but she took care that Mary should sit at his other side.

“How would you define ‘awfully pretty,’ Mary?” she said, mischievously, when they were all seated at table, and the grace had been said, and nobody seemed to have anything particular to talk about.

“Awfully pretty,” repeated Mary. “Awfully pretty what?”

“An ‘awfully pretty’ girl was the ‘what’ in question,” said Mr Morpeth, shielding himself by taking the bull by the horns, with more alertness than Mrs Greville had given him credit for.

Mary smiled.

“I could easily define, or point out to you rather, what, if I were a man, I should call an awfully pretty girl in this very neighbourhood,” she said, turning to Mrs Greville.

“I know whom you mean,” replied her hostess. “Miss Cheviott, is it not? Yes, she is exceedingly pretty. You have not seen her, Frances,” she went on to the eldest Miss Morpeth. “I wish you could.”

“Shall we not see her at church on Sunday?” said Miss Morpeth. “Are not the Cheviotts the principal people here, now?”

“Yes,” said Mrs Greville, “but they are a good deal away from home.” Here Mary’s heart almost stopped beating – this was what she had been longing yet dreaded to inquire about – what would become of all her plans should Mr Cheviott be away? But it was not so. “They are a good deal away from home,” Mrs Greville went on, “and there is another church nearer Romary than ours, where they go in the morning. But they very often – indeed, almost always the last few weeks, come to Uxley in the afternoon – Mr Cheviott likes Mr Greville’s preaching better than the old man’s at Romary Moor.”

“That’s not much of a compliment, my dear,” said Mr Greville from the end of the table, “considering that poor old Wells is so asthmatic that you can hardly catch a word he says now.”

A little laugh went round, and under cover of it Mary managed to say gently to Mr Greville:

“Then Mr Cheviott is at Romary now?”

“Oh, yes; saw him this morning riding past,” was the reply.

Mary gave a little sigh of relief, yet her heart beat faster for the rest of the evening.

“I wonder if I must do it to-morrow,” she said to herself, “or not till the day after. I have only the two days to count upon, and supposing he is out and I have to go again! I must try for to-morrow, I think.”

“Romary is just two miles from here, is it not?” she said, in a commonplace tone.

“Not so much,” replied Mr Greville. “Have you never seen it? It is quite a show place.”

“I was there once – some years ago,” said Mary.

“It is very much improved of late. If the family had been away we might easily have driven you over to see it,” said Mr Greville, good-naturedly. “However, some other time, perhaps, when your sister is here too. You must come over oftener this summer,” he added, utterly forgetting, if ever he had quite taken in, all his wife’s confidences about the Western girls’ wonderful successes at the Brocklehurst ball, and her more recent misgiving that something had “come between” Lilias and “that handsome Captain Beverley.”

“Thank you,” said Mary; and after this no more was said about Romary or the Cheviotts.

Chapter Fourteen
Mr Cheviott’s Ultimatum

 
”‘But methinks,’ quoth I, under my breath,
‘’Twas but cowardly work.’”
 

Songs of Two Worlds.

The next morning gave promise of a fine day, and Mary felt that she must be in readiness to seize any favourable opportunity for her meditated expedition.

“For to-morrow,” she said to herself, while she was dressing, “may be wet and stormy, and I must not weaken my position by making myself look ridiculous, if I can help it. And I certainly should look the reverse of dignified if I trudged over to Romary in a waterproof and goloshes! I very much doubt if I should get a sight of Mr Cheviott at all in such a case.”

She was trying to laugh at herself, by way of keeping up her spirits, but of real laughter there was very little in her heart. Even yesterday’s excitement seemed to have deserted her, and but for a curious kind of self-reliance, self-trust rather, which Mary possessed a good deal of, the chances are that she would have given up her intention and returned to Hathercourt and to Lilias, feeling that the attempt to interfere had been impossible for her.

“But I foresaw this,” she said to herself, reassuringly. “I knew I should lose heart and courage when it came to close quarters – but close quarters is not the best position for deciding such an action as this. I must remember that I resolved upon what I am going to do deliberately and coolly. It seemed to me a right thing to do, and I must have faith in my own decision. At the worst, at the very worst, all that can happen to me will be that that man will think I am mad, or something like it, to take such a step – perhaps he will make a good story of it, and laugh me over with his friends – though I must say he hasn’t the look of being given to laugh at anything! But why need I care if he does? I care nothing, less than nothing, what he thinks of me. I can keep my own self-respect, and that is all I need to care about.”

And so speaking to herself, in all sincerity, with no bravado or exaggeration, Mary more firmly riveted her own decision, and determined to go back upon it no more.

But she was paler than usual this, morning when she made her appearance at Mrs Greville’s breakfast-table, and her eyes had an unmistakable look of anxiety and weariness.

“Have you not slept well, my dear Mary?” asked Mrs Greville, kindly. “You look so tired, and last night you looked so very well.”

Mary’s colour rose quickly at these words and under the consciousness of a somewhat searching glance from Mr Morpeth, who was seated opposite her.

“I am perfectly well, thank you,” she replied, to her hostess, “but somehow I don’t think I did sleep quite as soundly as usual.”

“Miss Western’s room is not haunted, surely?” said Mr Morpeth, laughing. “All this sounds so like the preamble to some ghostly revelation.”

“No, indeed. There is no corner of this house that we could possibly flatter ourselves was haunted. I wish there were – it is all so very modern,” said Mrs Greville. “At Romary, now, there is such an exquisite haunted room – or suite of rooms rather. They are never used, but I think them the prettiest rooms in the house. It is so provoking that the Cheviotts are at home just now. I should so have liked you and Cecilia to see the house, Frances – and you, too, Mary, as you had never been there, and we can get an order from the agent any time.”

“I think the outside of the house as well worth seeing as any part of it,” said Mr Greville. “It is so well situated, and seen from the high road it looks very well indeed. By-the-bye, I shall be driving that way this afternoon if any of you young ladies care to come with me in the dog-cart? I am going on to Little Bexton, but if you don’t care to come so far, I could drop you about Romary, and you could walk back. The country is not pretty after that. Would you like to come, Frances? Cecilia has a cold, I hear.”

“Yes,” said Cecilia, “but not a very bad one. But I don’t think either of us can go, Mr Greville, for Miss Bentley is coming to see us this afternoon, and we must not be out.”

“Mary, then?” said Mr Greville.

Mary’s heart was beating fast, and she was almost afraid that the tremble in her voice was perceptible as she replied that she would enjoy the drive very much, she was sure.

“But I will not go all the way to Little Bexton, I think, if you don’t mind dropping me on the road. I should like the walk home,” she said to Mr Greville, and so it was decided. And for a wonder nothing came in the way.

It was years and years since Mary had been at Romary. When Mr Greville “dropped her” on the road, at a point about half a mile beyond the lodge gates, all about her seemed so strange and unfamiliar that she could scarcely believe she had ever been there before. Strange and unfamiliar, even though she was not more than ten miles from her own home, and though the general features of the landscape were the same. For to a real dweller in the country, differences and variations, which by a casual visitor are unobservable, are extraordinarily obtrusive. Mary had lived all her life at Hathercourt, and knew its fields and its trees, its cottages and lanes, as accurately as the furniture of her mother’s drawing-room. It was strange to her to meet even a dog on the road whose ownership she was unacquainted with, and when a countryman or two passed her with half a stare of curiosity instead of the familiar “Good-day to you, Miss Mary,” she felt herself “very far west” indeed, and instinctively hastened her steps.

“It is a good thing no one does know me about here,” she said to herself; “but how strange it seems! What a different life we have led from most people nowadays! I dare say it would never occur to Miss Cheviott, for instance, to think it at all strange to meet people on the road whose names and histories she knew nothing of. Young as she is, I dare say she has more friends and acquaintances than she can remember. How different from Lilias and me – ah, yes, it is that that makes what her brother has done so awfully wrong – so mean– but will he understand? Shall I be able to show it him?”

Mary stopped short – she was close to the lodge gates now. She stood still for a moment in a sort of silence of excitement and determination – then resolutely walked on again and hesitated no more. These Romary lodge gates had become to her a Rubicon.

It was a quarter of a mile at least from the gates to the house, but to Mary it seemed scarcely half a dozen yards. As in a dream she walked on steadily, heedless of the scene around her, that at another time would have roused her keen admiration – the beautiful old trees, beautiful even in leafless February; the wide stretching park with its gentle ups and downs and far-off boundary of forestland; the wistful-eyed deer, too tame to be scared by her approach; the sudden vision of a rabbit scuttering across her path – Mary saw none of them. Only once as she stood still for an instant to unlatch a gate in the wire fence inclosing the grounds close to the house, she looked round her and her gaze rested on a cluster of oaks at a little distance.

“When I see that clump of trees next,” she said to herself, “it will be over, and I shall know Lilias’s fate.”

Then she walked on again.

The bell clanged loudly as she pulled it at the hall door – to Mary, at least, it sounded so, and the interval was very short between its tones fading away into silence and the door’s being flung open by a footman, who gave a little start of astonishment when Mary’s unfamiliar voice caught his ear.

“I thought it was Miss Cheviott; I beg your pardon, ma’am,” he said, civilly enough, and the civility was a relief to Mary. “Is it Miss Cheviott you wish to see?”

“No, thank you,” said Mary, quietly. “I want to see Mr Cheviott, if he is at home – on a matter of business, perhaps you will be good enough to say.”

The man looked puzzled, and, for a moment, hesitated.

“If it is anything I could say, perhaps,” he began. “Unless it was anything very particular. My master is very busy to-day, and gave orders not to be disturbed.”

“It is something particular – that is to say, I wish to see Mr Cheviott himself. Perhaps you will inquire if he is to be seen,” said Mary, more coldly.

The man looked at her again, and Mary felt glad she had not her old waterproof cloak on. As it was, she was prettily, at least not unbecomingly, dressed in a thick, rough tweed and small, close-fitting felt hat. Her boots were neat, and her gloves – the only new pair she had had this winter – fitted well. There was nothing about her attire plainer or poorer than what would be worn by many a girl of her age, “regardless of expense,” for a country ramble. And Mr Cheviott’s servant was not to know it was all her Sunday best! Then she was tall! An immense advantage, now and then, in life.

“Certainly, ma’am, I will inquire at once,” said the man. He was a new-comer who had served a town apprenticeship to the dangers of indiscriminate admittance, and felt, despite appearances, he must be on his guard against a young woman who so resolutely demanded a personal interview with a gentleman. A man in disguise – what might she not be? But something in Mary’s low-toned “thank you” re-assured him.

“Will you step into the library while I ask?” he said, amiably, and Mary judged it best to do as he proposed.

There was no one in the library, and one of Mary’s but half-acknowledged wild hopes faded away as she entered the empty room. She had had a dream of perhaps meeting with Alys in the first place – the girl with the beautiful face and bewitching smile – of her guessing her errand, and pleading on her side.

“She looked so sympathisingly at me that night at Brocklehurst,” thought Mary – “almost as if she suspected my anxiety. Oh! if only I could talk to her, instead of that proud, cold brother of hers!”

But there was no Alys in the library, and an instant’s thought reminded Mary that of course she, a stranger calling on “business,” would not have been ushered except by mistake into Miss Cheviott’s presence, and she gave a little sigh as she mechanically crossed the room and stood gazing out of the window.

The servant’s voice recalled her thoughts.

“Your name, if you please, ma’am?” he was asking.

Mary was prepared for this.

“It would be no use giving my name,” she said quietly. “If you will be so good as to say to Mr Cheviott that I am only in this neighbourhood for a day or two, and have called to see him purely on a matter of business, I shall be much obliged to you.”

The man left the room. He went into Mr Cheviott’s Study by another door than the one by which it communicated with the library, but through this last, firmly closed though it was, in a moment or two the murmur of voices caught Mary’s quick ears, then some words, spoken loudly enough for her to distinguish their Sense.

“Where, do you say – in the library? A lady! Nonsense, it must be some mistake.”

Then the servant’s voice again in explanation. Mary moved away from the vicinity of the treacherous door.

A minute or two passed. Then the man appeared again.

“I am sorry, ma’am,” he began, apologetically, “but particularly obliged by your sending my master your name. He is so much engaged to-day – would like to understand if it is anything very particular, and – ” He hesitated, not liking to repeat his own suggestion to Mr Cheviott that very likely the young lady was collecting for the foreign missions, or a school treat, and might just as well as not send her message by him.

“It is something particular,” said Mary, chafing inwardly not a little at the difficulty of obtaining an audience of Mr Cheviott – “as if he were a royal personage almost,” she said to herself. “You can tell Mr Cheviott that the business on which I wish to see him is something particular; and my name is Miss Western.”

Again the envoy disappeared. Again the murmuring voices through the door, then a hasty sound as of some one pushing back a chair in impatience, and in another moment the door between the rooms opened, and some one came into the library. Not the man-servant this time, nor did he, lingering behind his master in the study in hopes of quenching his curiosity, obtain much satisfaction, for Mr Cheviott, advancing but one step into the library, and catching sight of its occupant, turned sharply and closed the door in the man’s face before giving any sign of recognition of his visitor – before, in fact, seeming to have perceived her at all. Then he came forward slowly.

Mary was still standing; as Mr Cheviott came nearer her, she bowed slightly, and began at once to speak.

“I can hardly expect you to recognise me,” she said, calmly. “I am Miss Western, the second Miss Western, from Hathercourt.”

Mr Cheviott bowed.

“I had the pleasure of being intro – I had the honour of meeting you at one of the Brocklehurst balls,” he said, inquiringly.

“Yes,” said Mary, “and once before – at Hathercourt Church one Sunday when you and your friends came over to the morning service. Before that day I do not think I ever heard your name, and yet I have come to your house to-day to say to you what it would be hard to say to an old friend – to ask you to listen while I try to make you see that you have been interfering unwarrantably in other people’s affairs; that what you have done is a cruel and bad thing, a thing you may sorely repent, that I believe you will repent, Mr Cheviott, if you are not already doing so?”

She raised her voice slightly to a tone of inquiry as she stopped, and, for the first time, looked up, straight into Mr Cheviott’s face. She had been speaking in a low tone, but with great distinctness and without hurry, yet when she left off it seemed as if her breath had failed her, as if her intense nervous resolution could carry her no further. Now she waited anxiously to see the effect of her words; she had determined beforehand to plunge at once, without preamble, into what she had to say, yet even now she was dissatisfied with what she had done. It seemed to her that she had made her appeal in an exaggerated and theatrical fashion; she wished she had waited for Mr Cheviott to speak first.

She looked at him, and for an instant there was silence. His countenance was not so stern and impassive as she had once before seen it, but its expression was even more unpromising. It bespoke extreme annoyance and surprise, “disgusted surprise,” said Mary to herself; “he thinks me lost to all sense of propriety, I can see.”

She could not see her own face; she was unconscious of the pale anxiety which overspread it, of the wistful questioning in the brown eyes which Mr Cheviott remembered so bright and sunny; she could not know that it would have needed a more than hard heart, an actually cruel one, not to be touched by the intensity in her young face – by the pathos of her position of appeal.

At first some instinct – a not unchivalrous instinct either – urged Mr Cheviott to refrain from a direct reply to Mary’s unmistakably direct attack.

“Will she not regret this fearfully afterwards?” he said to himself. “When she finds that I remain quite untouched, when she decides, as she must, that I am a brute! I will give her time to draw back by showing her the uselessness of all this before she commits herself further.”

But Mary saw his hesitation, and it deepened the resentment with which she heard his reply.

“Miss Western,” he said, “you must be under some extraordinary delusion. I will not pretend entire ignorance of what your words – words that, of course, from a lady I cannot resent – of what your words refer to, but pray stop before you say more. I ventured once before to try to warn you – or rather another through you, and this, I suppose, has led to your taking this – this very unusual step,” (“what a mean brute I am making of myself,” he said to himself, “but it is the kindest in the end to show her the hopelessness at once”) – “under, I must repeat, some delusion, or rather complete misapprehension of my possible influence in the matter.”

Mary was silent.

“You must allow me to remind you,” continued Mr Cheviott, hating himself, or the self he was obliged to make himself appear, more and more with each word he uttered, “that you are very young and inexperienced, and little attentions – passing trivialities, in fact, which more worldly-wise young ladies would attach no significance to, may have acquired a mistaken importance with you and your sister. I am very sorry —very sorry that any one connected with me should have acted so thoughtlessly; but you must allow, Miss Western, that I warned you – Went out of my way to warn you, as delicately as I knew how, when I saw the danger of – of – any mistake being made.”

Mary heard him out. Then she looked up again, with no appeal this time in her eyes, but in its stead righteous wrath and indignation.

“You are not speaking the truth,” she said, “at least, what you are inferring is not the truth. If it were the case that Captain Beverley’s ‘attentions’ to my sister were so trifling and meaningless – such as he may have paid to other girls scores of times —why did you go out of your way to warn us? It could not possibly have been out of respect for us; you knew and cared as little about us as we about you, and if you had said it was out of any care for us, the saying so would have been an unwarrantable freedom. No, Mr Cheviott, you knew Captain Beverley was in earnest, and your pride took fright lest he should make so poor a marriage. That is the truth, but I wish you had not made matters worse by denying it.”

The blood mounted to Mr Cheviott’s forehead; his dark face looked darker. That last speech of his had been a false move, and Mary knew it, and he knew it; still his presence of mind did not desert him.

“Believing what you do, then, Miss Western – I shall not again trouble you to believe anything I say – may I ask how, supposing my cousin to have been, as you express it, in earnest, you explain his not having gone further?”

“How I explain it?” exclaimed Mary. “You ask me that? I explain it by the fact that brought me here; you stopped his going further.”

“Influenced, no doubt, by the pride you alluded to just now.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” said Mary, dejectedly. “Influenced, at least, by some motive that blinded you to what you were doing. A girl’s broken heart is a trifle, I know, but the loss of a good influence over a man’s life is not a trifle, even you will allow. Captain Beverley thinks he owes you a great deal; I strongly suspect he owes you a great deal more than he at present realises. Mr Cheviott, do you not know that what you have done is a wrong and bad thing?”

Again her eyes took the pleading expression. Mr Cheviott turned away to avoid it. Then he said, very coldly:

“It is extremely unpleasant to have to say unpleasant things, but you force me to it. Supposing, for argument’s sake – supposing things were as you believe, I should certainly act as you believe I have acted. I should by every means in my power, endeavour to prevent my cousin’s making a marriage which would be utterly ill-advised and unsuitable, which would destroy his happiness, and which I cannot believe would be for the happiness of any one concerned.”

Mary’s face grew white as death. It was all over, then. She had lowered herself to this man for nothing. In the misery of thoroughly realising her defeat – the downthrow of all the hopes which unconsciously she had been cherishing more fondly than she had had any idea of – she, for the moment, forgot to be angry – she lost sight, as it were, of Mr Cheviott; in the depth of her disappointment, he became simply the incarnation of a cruel fate.

But he, at this juncture, was very far from losing sight of Mary. Her silent pallor frightened him, he thought she was going to faint, and he felt as if he were a murderer. A rush of pity and compunction roused his instinct of hospitality.

“Miss Western,” he said, gently, and with a look in his eyes of which Mary, when she afterwards recalled it, could not altogether deny the kindness and sympathy, “I fear you have overtired yourself. This wretched business has been too much for you. Will you allow me to get you a glass of wine?”

Mary hastily shook her head, and the effort to recover her self-control – for she felt herself on the point of bursting into tears – brought back the colour to her cheeks.

“I will go now,” she said, turning towards the door.

Mr Cheviott interrupted her.

“Will you not allow me to say one word of regret for the pain I have caused you?” he said, anxiously, humbly almost, “will you not allow me to say how deeply I admire and – and respect your courage and sisterly devotion?”

Mary shook her head.

“No,” she said. “I could not believe you if you said anything of the kind, knowing you now as I do. And I earnestly hope I may never see you and never speak to you again.”

The words were childish, but the tone and manner gave them force, and their force went home. Mr Cheviott winced visibly. Yet once again he spoke.

“You may resent my saying so at present,” he said, “but afterwards you may be glad to recall my assurance that no one shall ever hear from me one word of what has been said just now.”

Mary turned upon him with ineffable contempt.

“I dare say not,” she said. “For your own sake you will do well to keep silence. For mine you may tell it where and to whom you choose.”

Again Mr Cheviott’s face flushed.

“You are a foolish child,” he said, under his breath. Whether Mary caught the words or not he could not tell, but in a gentler tone she added, as she was passing through the door-way, “I think, however, I should tell you that no one – my sister, of course not —no one knows of my coming here to-day.”

Mr Cheviott bowed.

“I am glad to hear it,” he said, with what Mary imagined to be extreme irony.

He crossed the hall with her, and opened the large door himself. But Mary did not look at him as she passed out. And, when she had got some way down the carriage-drive in sight of the dump of oak trees, she burst into a flood of bitter tears. Tears that Mr Cheviott suspected, though he did not see them.

“Poor child,” he said, as he returned to his study, “I trust she will meet no one in the park. Those gossiping servants – Well, surely I can never have a more wretched piece of work to go through than this! What a mean, despicable snob she thinks me!” he laughed, bitterly. “Why, I wonder, is it the fate of some people to be constantly doing other people’s dirty work? I have had my share of it, Heaven knows; but I think I am growing quite reckless to what people think of me. What eyes that child has – and how she must love that sister of hers! If it had been she that Arthur had made a fool of himself about – ”