CHAPTER IX.
Months passed away—months of dreary, monotonous despondency, through which ran a vein of anxiety that banished peace. During all this time matters went on pretty much as they had done before, with one exception, I held no further intercourse with Mr. Basil Bainrothe. Claude was absent most of this time on business, for a firm with which he had lately connected himself, and on the few occasions of his presence at Monfort Hall treated me with marked formality.
Evelyn had affected to make light of Mr. Bainrothe's outrage toward me, though far from defending him. "Men of his years do these things sometimes," she said, "under the mask of playfulness and fatherly feeling, and, however unpleasant it may be to bear them, one has to pass them over. You are right, of course, to be reserved with him henceforth, Miriam. By-the-by, dear child, your prudery is excessive, I fear, and it makes a young girl, especially if she is not beautiful, so ridiculous! But, of course, that even is far better than the opposite extreme. Now, I flatter myself, I know how to steer the juste milieu, always so desirable."
"But, Evelyn," I had rejoined, "his manner was atrocious! I could not—I would not if I could—give you any idea of its animality; yes, that is the very word! it makes my blood creep to think of it, even!"
And I hid my face in my hands, crimson as it was from the retrospection.
"Then don't think of it at all. That will be the best way, decidedly," she had said, tapping me playfully with her fan, then whispering: "This lover of yours may be useful to us, you know; let us not goad him to rebellion. You can be as cool as you please, Miriam, but be civil all the same."
I surveyed her with flashing eyes. "Such advice," I retorted, "falls but poorly from your lips, Evelyn Erle, whom my mistaken father dubbed 'propriety personified.' One woman should feel for another's wounded delicacy, even if a stranger; but, when it comes to sisters, O Evelyn!"
"And such insolence falls very absurdly from you, Miriam Monfort, under the circumstances. Sisters, indeed!" she sneered. "It was a claim you repudiated once!" and, with a sweeping bow, she left me, to repeat "sisters, indeed!" in my bitter solitude.