‘Not exactly. I am waiting to see my way through the bother.’
‘Who is it? Tell me about it, Mervyn.’
‘I don’t mind telling you, but for your life don’t say a word to any one. I would never forgive you, if you set my Ladies Bannerman and Acton at me.’
Phœbe was alarmed. She had little hope that their likings would coincide; his manner indicated defiance of opinion, and she could not but be averse to a person for whose sake he wished to turn them out. ‘Well,’ was all she could say, and he proceeded: ‘I suppose you never heard of Cecily Raymond.’
‘Of Moorcroft?’ she asked, breathing more freely. ‘Sir John’s daughter?’
‘No, his niece. It is a spooney thing to take up with one’s tutor’s daughter, but it can’t be helped. I’ve tried to put her out of my head, and enter on a more profitable speculation, but it won’t work!’
‘Is she very pretty—prettier than Lucilla Sandbrook?’ asked Phœbe, unable to believe that any other inducement could attach him.
‘Not what you would call pretty at all, except her eyes. Not a bit fit to make a figure in the world, and a regular little parsoness. That’s the deuce of it. It would be mere misery to her to be taken to London and made to go into society; so I want to have it settled, for if she could come here and go poking into cottages and schools, she would want nothing more.’
‘Then she is very good?’
‘You and she will be devoted to each other. And you’ll stand up for her, I know, and then a fig for their two ladyships. You and I can be a match for Juliana, if she tries to bully my mother. Not that it matters. I am my own man now; but Cecily is crotchety, and must not be distressed.’