“Don’t you like him the better for keeping out of all these follies?”
“Norman does not call them so, I am sure.”
“No, he is too good to condemn—”
“It is not only that,” said Ethel. “I know papa thinks that the first grief, coming at his age, and in the manner it did, checked and subdued his spirits, so that he has little pleasure in those things. And he always meant to be a clergyman, which acted as a sort of consecration on him; but many things are innocent; and I do believe papa would like it better, if Norman were less grave.”
“Yes,” said Meta, remembering the Sunday talk, “but still, he would not be all he is—so different from others—”
“Of course, I don’t mean less good, only, less grave,” said Ethel, “and certainly less nervous. But, perhaps, it is a good thing; dear mamma thought his talents would have been a greater temptation than they seem to be, subdued as he has been. I only meant that you must not condemn all that Norman does not do. Now, goodnight.”
Very different were the feelings with which those two young girls stretched themselves in their beds that night. Margaret Rivers’s innocent, happy little heart was taken up in one contemplation. Admiration, sympathy, and the exultation for him, which he would not feel for himself, drew little Meta entirely out of herself—a self that never held her much. She was proud of the slender thread of connection between them; she was confident that his vague fancies were but the scruples of a sensitive mind, and, as she fell sound asleep, she murmured broken lines of Decius, mixed with promises not to look.
Etheldred heard them, for there was no sleep for her. She had a parley to hold with herself, and to accuse her own feelings of having been unkind, ungrateful, undutiful towards her father. What had a fit of vanity brought her to? that she should have been teased by what would naturally have been her greatest delight! her father’s pleasure in being with her. Was this the girl who had lately vowed within herself that her father should be her first earthly object?
At first, Ethel blamed herself for her secret impatience, but another conviction crossed her, and not an unpleasing one, though it made her cheeks tingle with maidenly shame, at having called it up. Throughout this week, Norman Ogilvie had certainly sought her out. He had looked disappointed this evening—there was no doubt that he was attracted by her—by her, plain, awkward Ethel! Such a perception assuredly never gave so much pleasure to a beauty as it did to Ethel, who had always believed herself far less good-looking than she really was. It was a gleam of delight, and, though she set herself to scold it down, the conviction was elastic, and always leaped up again.
That resolution came before her, but it had been unspoken; it could not be binding, and, if her notion were really right, the misty brilliant future of mutual joy dazzled her! But there was another side: her father oppressed and lonely, Margaret ill and pining, Mary, neither companion nor authority, the children running wild; and she, who had mentally vowed never to forsake her father, far away, enjoying her own happiness. “Ah! that resolve had seemed easy enough when it was made, when,” thought Ethel, “I fancied no one could care for me! Shame on me! Now is the time to test it! I must go home with papa.”