"Ah, yes, exactly; why? Why is it that men and women cannot always understand each other; that they will remain for hours in each other's presence without the power of expressing, by a single word, the thoughts that are busy within them? Who can say why it is so? Can you get up and make a clean breast of it all to him?"
"But I am a woman, and am very poor."
"Yes, and he is a man, and, like most men, very dumb when they have anything at heart which requires care in the speaking. He knows no better than to let things be as they are; to leave the words all unspoken till he can say to you, 'Now is the time for us to go and get ourselves married;' just as he might tell you that now was the time to go and dine."
"But will he ever say that?"
"Of course he will. If he does not say so when all this business is off his mind, when Mr Maguire and his charges are put at rest, when the lawyers have finished their work, then come to me and tell me that I have deceived you. Say to me then, 'Clara Mackenzie, you have put me wrong, and I look to you to put me right.' You will find I will put you right."
In answer to this, Margaret was able to say nothing further. She sat for a while with her face buried in her hands thinking of it all, asking herself whether she might dare to believe it all. At last, however, she went up to dress for dinner; and when she came down to the drawing-room there was a smile upon her face.
After that a month or six weeks passed in Cavendish Square, and there was, during all that time, no further special reference to Sir John Ball or his affairs. Twice he was asked to dine with the Mackenzies, and on both occasions he did so. On neither of those evenings did he say very much to Margaret; but, on both of them he said some few words, and it was manifestly his desire that they should be regarded as friends.
And as the spring came on, Margaret's patience returned to her, and her spirits were higher than they had been at any time since she first discovered that success among the Stumfoldians at Littlebath did not make her happy.