And that was the whole result of the tête-à-tête. He was in no mood for questions, and marched out of the room for a moonlight cigar. Phœbe only remained with the conviction that something had happened.
Miss Charlecote was more fortunate. She had met the Baronet in the passage, and was accosted by him with, ‘Do you ever do such a thing as take a turn on that terrace?’
It was a welcome invitation, and in no more time than it took to fetch a shawl, the two old friends were pacing the paved terrace together.
‘Well, what do you think of him?’ began Sir John. ‘There must be more good in him than I thought.’
‘Much more than I thought.’
‘He has been speaking to me, and I can’t say but that I was sorry for him, though why it should have gone so hard with so sensible and good a girl as Cecily to give up such a scamp, I never could guess! I told George that seeing what I saw of him, and knowing what I knew, I could think it nothing better than a sacrifice to give her to him!’
‘Exactly what I thought!’
‘After the way he had used her, too—talking nonsense to her, and then playing fast and loose, trying his luck with half the young ladies in London, and then fancying she would be thankful to him as soon as he wanted a wife to keep house! Poor child, that would not have weighed with her a moment though—it puts me out of patience to know how fond she is of him—but for his scampishness, which made it a clear duty to refuse him. Very well she behaved, poor thing, but you see how she pined away—though her mother tells me that not a fretful word was ever heard from her, as active and patient and cheerful as ever. Then the Holmbys took her abroad, the only thing to save her health, but I never trusted the woman, and when by and by she writes to her father that Fulmort was coming, and her aunt would not take her away, “George,” I said, “never mind; I’ll go at once, and bring her home—she shall not be kept there to be torn to pieces between her feelings and her duty.” And now I am come, I declare I don’t know what to be at—I should think nothing of it if the lad only talked of reforming—but he looks so downcast, and owns so honestly that we were quite right, and then that excellent little sister of his is so fond of him, and you have stood his company this whole year—that I declare I think he must be good for something! Now you who have looked on all his life, just say what you think of him—such a way as he went on in last year, too—the crew that he got about him—’
‘Phœbe thinks that was the consequence of his disappointment.’
‘A man that could bring such a lot into the same house with that sister of his, had no business to think of Cecily.’