“Yes, you must let me,” said her visitor, looking up with her pretty imploring gesture, “you know I have known him so long, and he has been so good to me!”
“Indeed it is very kind in you,” said Ermine, fully feeling the force of the plea expressed in the winning young face and gentle eyes full of tears.
“Oh, no, I could not help it. I am only so sorry we kept him away from you when you wanted him so much; but we did not know, and he was Sir Stephen’s right hand, and we none of us knew what to do without him; but if he had only told—”
“Thank you, oh, thank you!” said Ermine, “but indeed it was better for him to be away.”
Even her wish to console that pleading little widow could not make her say that his coming would not have been good for her. “It has been such a pleasure to hear he had so kind and happy a home all these years.”
“Oh, you cannot think how Sir Stephen loved and valued him. The one thing I always did wish was, that Conrade should grow up to be as much help and comfort to his father, and now he never can! But,” driving back a tear, “it was so hard that you should not have known how distinguished and useful and good he was all those years. Only now I shall have the pleasure of telling you,” and she smiled. She was quite a different being when free from the unsympathizing influence which, without her understanding it, had kept her from dwelling on her dearest associations.
“It will be a pleasure of pleasures,” said Ermine, eagerly.
“Then you will do me a favour, a very great favour,” said Lady Temple, laying hold of her hand again, “if you and your sister and niece will come and stay with me.” And as Ermine commenced her refusal, she went on in the same coaxing way, with a description of her plans for Ermine’s comfort, giving her two rooms on the ground floor, and assuring her of the absence of steps, the immunity from all teasing by the children, of the full consent of her sister, and the wishes of the Colonel, nay, when Ermine was still unpersuaded of the exceeding kindness it would be to herself. “You see I am terribly young, really,” she said, “though I have so many boys, and my aunt thinks it awkward for me to have so many officers calling, and I can’t keep them away because they are my father’s and Sir Stephen’s old friends; so please do come and make it all right!”
Ermine was driven so hard, and so entirely deprived of all excuse, that she had no alternative left but to come to the real motive.
“I ought not,” she said, “it is not good for him, so you must not press me, dear Lady Temple. You see it is best for him that nobody should ever know of what has been between us.”