“Oh, don't take it that way,” broke she in, looking at him with a half-reproachful expression. “Do not, I beseech you, let Mr. Cutbill's spirit influence you. Be hopeful and trustful, as you always were.”
“I 'll try,” said he, passing his arm round her, and smiling affectionately at her.
“I hope he has gone, Gusty. I do hope we shall not see him again. He is so terribly hard in his judgments, so merciless in the way he sentences people who merely think differently from himself. After hearing him talk for an hour or so, I always go away with the thought that if the world be only half as bad as he says it is, it's little worth living in.”
“Well, he will go to-morrow, or Thursday at farthest; and I won't pretend I shall regret him. He is occasionally too candid.”
“His candor is simply rudeness; frankness is very well for a friend, but he was never in the position to use this freedom. Only think of what he said to me yesterday: he said that as it was not unlikely I should have to turn governess or companion, the first thing I should do would be to change my name. 'They,' he remarked,—but I don't well know whom he exactly meant,—'they don't like broken-down gentlefolk. They suspect them of this, that, and the other;' and he suggested I should call myself Miss Cutbill. Did you ever hear impertinence equal to that?”
“But it may have been kindly intentioned, Nelly. I have no doubt he meant to do a good-natured thing.”
“Save me from good-nature that is not allied with good manners, then,” said she, growing crimson as she spoke.
“I have not escaped scot-free, I assure you,” said he, smiling; “but it seems to me a man really never knows what the world thinks of him till he has gone through the ordeal of broken fortune. By the way, where is Cattaro? the name sounds Italian.”
“I assumed it to be in Italy somewhere, but I can't tell you why.”
Bramleigh took down his atlas, and pored patiently over Italy and her outlying islands for a long time, but in vain. Nelly, too, aided him in his search, but to no purpose. While they were still bending over the map, Cutbill entered with a large despatch-shaped letter in his hand.