MRS. CAMPION.—“Cynicism and mockery were not so much the fashion among young men in your father’s day as I suppose they are now, and therefore they seem new to Mr. Travers. To me they are not new, because I saw more of the old than the young when I lived in London, and cynicism and mockery are more natural to men who are leaving the world than to those who are entering it.”
CECILIA.—“Dear Mrs. Campion, how bitter you are, and how unjust! You take much too literally the jesting way in which Mr. Chillingly expresses himself. There can be no cynicism in one who goes out of his way to make others happy.”
MRS. CAMPION.—“You mean in the whim of making an ill-assorted marriage between a pretty village flirt and a sickly cripple, and settling a couple of peasants in a business for which they are wholly unfitted.”
CECILIA.—“Jessie Wiles is not a flirt, and I am convinced that she will make Will Somers a very good wife, and that the shop will be a great success.”
MRS. CAMPION.—“We shall see. Still, if Mr. Chillingly’s talk belies his actions, he may be a good man, but he is a very affected one.”
CECILIA.—“Have I not heard you say that there are persons so natural that they seem affected to those who do not understand them?”
Mrs. Campion raised her eyes to Cecilia’s face, dropped them again over her work, and said, in grave undertones,—“Take care, Cecilia.”
“Take care of what?”
“My dearest child, forgive me; but I do not like the warmth with which you defend Mr. Chillingly.”
“Would not my father defend him still more warmly if he had heard you?”