‘I am surprised at you, Phœbe; you have kept me five minutes.’
‘Some young ladies do worse,’ said the Admiral, who was very fond of her; ‘and her time was not lost. I never saw her look better.’
‘I don’t like such a pair of milkmaid’s cheeks, looking so ridiculously delighted, too,’ said Lady Bannerman, crossly. ‘Really, Phœbe, one would think you were but just come up from the country, and had never been to a concert before. Those stupid little white marabouts in your hair again, too!’
‘Well,’ said Sir Nicholas, ‘I take them as a compliment—Phœbe knows I think they become her.’
‘I don’t say they are amiss in themselves, but it is all obstinacy, because I desire her to buy that magnificent ruby bandeau! How is any one to believe in her fortune if she dresses in that twopenny-halfpenny fashion? I declare I have a great mind to leave her behind.’
Phœbe could almost have said ‘pray do,’ so much did she long to join the party in Woolstone-lane, where the only alloy was, that poor Maria’s incapacity for secrecy forbade her hearing the good news.
Miss Charlecote, likewise, was secretly a little scandalized at the facility with which the Raymonds had consented to the match; she thought Mervyn improved, but neither religious nor repentant, and could not think Cecily or her family justified in accepting him. Something of the kind became perceptible to Robert when they first talked over the matter together.
‘It may be so,’ he said, ‘but I really believe that Mervyn will be more susceptible of real repentance when he has imperceptibly been led to different habits and ways of thinking. In many cases, I have seen that the mind has to clear itself, and leave old things behind before it has the capacity of perceiving its errors.’
‘Repentance must precede amendment.’
‘Some repentance must, but even the sense of the inexpedience and inconvenience of evil habits may be the first step above them, and in time the power of genuine repentance may be attained.’