“I will take your word for it, Martin. I think you do her no more than justice,” said the old lawyer, sententiously.
“And I 'll tell you another quality she possesses,” said Martin, in a lower and more cautious tone, as though dreading to be overheard,—“she understands my Lady to perfection,—when to yield and when to oppose her. The girl has an instinct about it, and does it admirably; and there was poor dear Mary, with all her abilities, and she never could succeed in this! How strange, for nobody would think of comparing the two girls!”
“Nobody!” dryly re-echoed Repton.
“I mean, of course, that nobody who knew the world could; for in all the glitter and show-off of fashionable acquirement, poor Molly is the inferior.”
Repton looked steadfastly at him for several seconds; he seemed as if deliberating within himself whether or not he'd undeceive him at once, or suffer him to dwell on an illusion so pleasant to believe. The latter feeling prevailed, and he merely nodded slowly, and passed the decanter across the table.
“Molly,” continued Martin, with all the fluency of a weak man when he fancies he has got the better of an argument,—“Molly is her father all over. The same resolution, the same warmth of heart, and that readiness at an expedient which never failed poor Barry! What a clever fellow he was! If he had a fault, it was just being too clever.”
“Too speculative, too sanguine,” interposed Repton.
“That, if you like to call it so,—the weakness of genius.”
Repton gave a long sigh, and crossing his arms, fell into a fit of musing, and so they both sat for a considerable time.
“Harry is coming home, you said?” broke in Repton at last.