This led nowhere, and that awful pause seemed likely to ensue where people ill at ease with one another search for topics to hide up their discomfort. But Virginia, who had sat down again, said, "Mr. Clinton, have you ever forgiven us for heading back the fox?"
"Eh! What!" asked the Squire, with a lively recollection of the rebuke he had administered on the occasion referred to.
Virginia laughed. "You were terrible," she said. "But you had every right to be terrible. I'd never done such a thing before, and I hope I shall never do such a thing again. I feel like getting under the sofa every time I think of it."
The Squire thought the last statement just slightly verging on indelicacy, but its effect on his mind was only momentary, so relieved was he at having a subject held out to him. Deep down in his heart he held to his aversion to Virginia, and nothing in her appearance or attitude had in the least softened it. But, externally, it had to be covered up, and because she offered him a covering he was grateful, and for the moment well disposed towards her.
"Ladies who come into the hunting-field," he said, with a near approach to a smile, "and turn foxes, must expect to be spoken sharply to."
This was enough for Virginia to go on with, but not for Miss Dexter, who had heard the words, but missed the smile. "It is like interfering with a child's toys," she said. "He forgets his manners for the moment."
The Squire bent a look of puzzled displeasure on her, but before her words could sink in, Virginia said, "Toby, don't be tiresome. You don't know anything whatever about hunting, and you are so absurdly vain that you can't bear to be corrected when you've done wrong."
Dick laughed and said to his mother, "Miss Dexter gets a good deal of correction and puts up with it like an angel. She's not in the least vain, really."
"Nothing much to be vain of," said Miss Dexter, with complete equanimity.
The Squire was still looking at her as if adjusting his mind to her presence and potentialities, and she looked up at him and said, "Miss Phipp, your children's governess, is an old friend of mine. We were at school together." Then she looked down again and took a sip of tea.