‘How could you know it?’
‘Because I saw a man in his vocation.’
A long silence, during which Cilly caught a pitying glance.
‘Please to put that out of your head!’ she exclaimed. ‘There’s no pity, no ill-usage in the case. I wilfully did what I was warned that he would not bear, and there was an end of it.’
‘I had hoped not past recall.’
‘Well, if you will have the truth, when it was done and not
to be helped, we were both very sorry; I can answer at least for one, but he had bound himself heart and soul to his work, and does not care any longer for me. What, you, the preacher of sacrifice, wishing to see your best pupil throw up your pet work for the sake of a little trumpery crushed fire-fly?’
‘Convict me out of my own mouth,’ said Honor, sadly, ‘it will not make me like to see my fire-fly crushed.’
‘When the poor fire-fly has lit the lamp of learning for six idle children, no other cause for dimness need be sought. No, I was well and wicked in the height of the pain, and long after it wore out—for wear out it did—and I am glad he is too wise to set it going again. I don’t like emotions. I only want to be let alone. Besides, he has got into such a region of goodness, that his wife ought to be super-excellent. I know no one good enough for him unless you would have him!’
As usual, Honor was balked by bestowing sympathy, and could only wonder whether this were reserve, levity, or resignation, and if she must accept it as a fact that in the one the attachment had been lost in the duties of his calling, in the other had died out for want of requital. For the present, in spite of herself, her feeling towards Robert verged more on distant rather piqued admiration than on affection, although he nearly approached the ideal of her own first love, and Owen Sandbrook’s teaching was, through her, bearing good fruit in him, even while recoiling on her woman’s heart through Owen’s daughter.