"You know what Father told you about Lord Cramer. I have now seen him. I would not believe any wrong of him. I shall not listen to any wrong of him without protesting it; so I thought it best not to go into temptation."
"You did right."
"He is a beautiful young man—and how exquisite are his manners! How did he learn them?"
"He has always lived among people of the highest distinction, and they practice them naturally—or ought to do so."
"To you, to his stepmother, to Father, and to me he was equally polite. He did not treat me indifferently because I have only the shy, half-formed manners of a school-girl. He paid you as much respect as he paid Lady Cramer, though you are old and beneath her in social rank, nor was he in the least subservient to Father because he is a famous minister. He was equally attentive and courteous to all."
"I will take leave to differ with you, Marion Macrae. I am not old. I am in the midway of my life, young in soul, mind and body, and I am nothing beneath Lady Cramer in rank. Keep that in your mind. And you are not a shy, untrained school-girl; you are a young, lovely woman, with the naturally fine manners that come from a good heart and proper education. As for subservience to your father, I saw nothing of it from Lord Cramer, but Lady Cramer deferred to him in everything, and I wonder she has not turned his head round, and his heart inside out with her humility, and homage, and her downcast eyes."
"She is very pretty, Aunt."
"She is fairly beautiful. She has the witching ways of those golden-haired women, and all their flattering submissions. She can drop her blue eyes, and then lift them with a flash that would trouble any man's heart that had love or life left in it. And see how wisely and warily she dresses herself—the long, black, satin gown, with its white crape collar and cuffs, and the black and white satin ribbons so fresh and uncreased!"
"And the wave and curl of her lovely hair, under the small white lace bonnet! I thought, Aunt, she——"
"She ought not to have worn a white bonnet. It is too soon after her husband's death to wear a bit of white lace and a few white flowers on her head. She should have worn her widow's bonnet for two years, and it is wanting half a year at least of that term. But, this or that, she is a butterfly of beauty and vanity, and I would not be astonished if she fell in love with your father. To most women he would be an extraordinarily attractive man."