"So much depends on how people understand things," observed Lady Eynesford.
It was on the tip of Eleanor's tongue to add, "Or wish to understand them," but she recollected that she had really no basis for this malicious insinuation, and made expiation for entertaining it by saying to Alicia,
"You think she's a nice girl, don't you?"
"Very," said Alicia briefly.
"The question is not what she is, so much as who she is," said Lady Eynesford.
"I expect it was all Dick's fault," said Alicia hastily.
"Or that man's," suggested the Governor's wife.
A month ago Alicia would have protested strongly. Now she held her peace: she could not trust herself to defend the Premier. Yet she was full of sympathy for his daughter, and of indignation at the tone in which her sister-in-law referred to him. Also she was indignant with Dick: this conduct of Dick's struck her as an impertinence, and, on behalf of the Medlands, she resented it. They talked, too, as if it were a flirtation with a milliner—dangerous enough to be troublesome, yet too absurd to be really dangerous—discreditable no doubt to Dick, but—she detected the underlying thought—still more discreditable to Daisy Medland. The injustice angered her: it would have angered her at any time; but her anger was forced to lie deeply hidden and secret, and the suppression made it more intense. Dick's flighty fancy caricatured the feeling with which she was struggling: the
family attitude towards it faintly foreshadowed the consternation that the lightest hint of her unbanishable dream would raise. And, worst of all—so it seemed to her—what must Medland think? He must surely scorn them all—this petty pride, their microscopic distinctions of rank, their little devices—all so small, yet all enough to justify the wounding of his daughter's heart. It gave her a sharp, almost unendurable pang to think that he might confound her in his sweeping judgment. Could he after—after what he had seen? He might think she also trifled—that it was in the family—that they all thought it good fun to lead people on and then—draw back in scorn lest the suppliant should so much as touch them.