‘I should be very sorry not to be like other people.’
‘Phœbe, you do not know how much of the pleasure of my life would be lost if you were to become a mere conventional young lady.’
Phœbe had no notion of being the pleasure of any one’s life except Robin’s and Maria’s, and was rather affronted that Owen should profess to enjoy her childish ignorance and naïveté.
‘I believe,’ she said, ‘I was rude just now when I told you not to talk. I am sorry for it; I shall know better next time.’
‘Your knowing better is exactly what I deprecate. But there it is; unconsciousness is the charm of simplicity. It is the very thing aimed at by Rashe and Cilly, and all their crew, with their eccentricities.’
‘I am sorry for it,’ seriously returned Phœbe, who had by this time, by quiet resistance, caused him to land her under the lee of Miss Charlecote, instead of promenading with her about the room. He wanted her to dance with him again, saying she owed it to him for having sacrificed the first to common humanity, but great as was the pleasure of a polka, she shrank from him in this complimentary mood, and declared she should dance no more that evening. He appealed to Honora, who, disliking to have her boy balked of even a polka, asked Phœbe if she were very tired, and considering her ‘rather not’
as equivalent to such a confession, proposed a retreat to their own room.
Phœbe was sorry to leave the brilliant scene, and no longer to be able to watch Lucilla, but she wanted to shake Owen off, and readily consented. She shut her door after one good night. She was too much grieved and disappointed to converse, and could not bear to discuss whether the last hope were indeed gone, and whether Lucilla had decided her lot without choosing to know it. Alas! how many turning-points may be missed by those who never watch!
How little did Phœbe herself perceive the shoal past which her self-respect had just safely guided her!
‘I wonder if those were ball-room manners? What a pity if they were, for then I shall not like balls,’ was all the thought that she had leisure to bestow on her own share in the night’s diversions, as through the subsequent hours she dozed and dreamt, and mused and slept again, with the feverish limbs and cramp-tormented feet of one new to balls; sometimes teased by entangling fishing flies, sometimes interminably detained in the moonlight, sometimes with Miss Fennimore waiting for an exercise, and the words not to be found in the dictionary; and even this unpleasant counterfeit of sleep deserting her after her usual time for waking, and leaving her to construct various fabrics of possibilities for Robin and Lucy.