‘Nay—didn’t I tell you that I let her do it as an expiation. Does not that prove what it costs me?’
‘Then why not—’ he began.
‘Because,’ she interrupted, ‘in the first place, you have no idea of the price of Lawrence’s portraits; and, in the second, it is so natural that you should be kind to me that it costs even my proud spirit—just nothing at all’—and again she looked up to him with beamy, tearful eyes, and quivering, smiling lip.
‘What, it is still a bore to live with Miss Charlecote,’ cried he, in his rough eagerness.
‘Don’t use such words,’ she answered, smiling. ‘She is all kindness and forgiveness, and what can it be but my old vixen spirit that makes this hard to bear?’
‘Cilla!’ he said.
‘Well?’
‘Cilla!’
‘I have a great mind to tell you why I came to Southminster.’