"Oh," Enid's fair face flushed a little. "I thought—I did not know that you intended—when you began to speak to me first, I mean——"
Hubert could not help smiling.
"I understand; you thought I spoke on a sudden impulse of affection, longing to comfort and help you. So I did. But that is not incompatible with previous thought and preparation, is it? Surely my care for you—my love for you—would be worth less as a sudden growth than as a plant of long and hardy growth?" He groaned inwardly at the subterfuge contained in the last few words, but he felt that it was unavoidable.
Enid looked up and gave him an answering smile.
"Oh, yes, I see!" she said hurriedly; but there was some little dissatisfaction in her mind, she did not quite know why.
Even her innocent heart dimly discerned the fact that Hubert was not her ideal lover. His wooing had scarcely been ardent in tone; and to find that it had all been discussed, mapped out, as it were, and formally permitted by the General, and perhaps by his wife, gave her a sudden chill. For Flossy's interpretation of Enid's melancholy was by no means a true one. She had dreamed a little of Hubert in a vague romantic way, as young girls are apt to do when a new-comer strikes their fancy; but she had not set her heart upon him at all in the way which Florence had led her brother to believe. There was certainly danger lest she should do so now.
"The General says," Hubert went on more lightly, "that you cannot be expected to know your own mind for a couple of years. What do you say to that?"
"I think that uncle Richard might know me better," said the girl, smiling. She was still standing on the hearthrug, and Hubert put his arm round her as he spoke.
"And he will not consent even to an engagement until you are eighteen, Enid. But he did not forbid me to speak to you and ask you whether you cared for me, and if you would wait two years."
"Oh, why should it be so long?" the girl cried out; and then she turned crimson, seeing the meaning that Hubert attached to her words. "I only mean," she said, "that I wanted to tell you everything that was in my mind just now."