"You think I am so very young!"
"Well—seventeen."
"Oh, but I don't feel young at all!" the girl said half wearily, half bitterly. "I seem to have lived centuries! You know, cousin Hubert, there are very few girls of my age who have had all the trouble that I have had."
"You have had a great deal—you have been the victim of a tragedy," said Hubert gloomily, not able to deny the truth of her remark, even while he was forced to remember that many other girls of Enid's age had far more real and tangible sorrows than she. The vision of a girl pleading with him to find her work flashed suddenly across his mind; her words about London Bridge—"her last resource"—occurred to him; and his common sense told him that after all Enid's position, sad and lonely though it was, could scarcely be called so pitiable as that of Cynthia West. But it was not his part to tell her so; his own share in producing Enid's misfortunes sealed his lips.
What he said however was almost too direct an allusion to the past to be thought sympathetic by Enid. A very natural habit had grown up at Beechfield Hall of never mentioning her father's fate; and this silence had had the bad result of making her brood over the matter without daring to reveal her thoughts. The word "tragedy" seemed to her almost like a profanation. It sent the hot blood rushing into her face at once. Enid's organisation was peculiarly delicate and sensitive; her knowledge of the publicity given to the details of her father's death was torture to her. She was glad of the seclusion in which the General lived, because when she went into Whitminster, she would hear sometimes a rumor, a whispered word—"Look—that is the daughter of Sydney Vane who was murdered a few years ago! Extraordinary case—don't you remember it?"—and the consciousness that these words might be spoken was unbearable to her. Hubert had touched an open wound somewhat too roughly.
He saw his mistake.
"Forgive me for speaking of it," he said. "I fancied that you were thinking of the past."
"Oh, no, no—not of that!" cried Enid, scarcely knowing what she said.
"Of other troubles?" Hubert queried very softly. It was natural that he should think of what Flossy had said to him quite recently.
"Yes—of other things."