Her colour deepened, but her lips moved into an odd little smile, out of which came the words, 'Isn't that rather foolish?'
'I couldn't help it—I beg your pardon,' said he, reddening. 'You do look so lovely! but indeed it is not the externals only, but what looks through.'
'And that is what makes me afraid,' said Wilmet, as the dew gathered on her eye-lashes. 'I don't think I'm so nice as you take me for.'
'Probably you don't,' he said, smiling.
'But just hear me,' she said, laying her hand on his, as if to silence him. 'You ought to know what all the others would tell you if they were not too kind. I know they all feel me strict, and managing, and domineering! Yes, it makes you laugh, but I really am. I don't think you would have liked me at all if you had not seen me out of my usual life, with only Lance—' and as all she said only made him press her hand the closer—'You see, I've always had to do things. Ever since I was a little girl I have had to keep order, great boys and all, and I know it has made me disagreeable;' then, in answer to some sound more incredulously negative than words, 'Yes indeed! Felix and all go to Cherry with whatever comes very near them. She hasn't been hardened and sharpened and dried up like me, and wasn't stupid to begin with.'
'Cherry is very clever, but she is—not—'
'Now don't. I know how it is. I know I'm horribly pretty, and I've been a wonder always for keeping the house going, and doing for them all, and so you fancy me everything charming; but I do so wish you could really know, as my brothers do, how it takes out of one all that is nice and sweet, and that people like.'
'People?' said John, smiling; but seeing that a mirthful even though a loving answer was not what she wanted, he gravely said, 'I do understand, dearest, that you have had to be too much of an authority to be altogether the companion and confidante that Geraldine is free to be, but perhaps I feel that this renders you more wholly and altogether my own.'
'Oh!'—a strange half sob—'do you know, I had just begun to know how solitary I was when Lance was so happy to get Robina, when you—'
'And if I told you all, you would know that I was feeling a certain loneliness at home, and that if you had asked my sisters, they would have said that Jack was not the harmonious element he appeared. There—there's a pleasing prospect!'