The colour glowed into Felix's face as he answered, 'You have not been so silly as to take Edgar's nonsense in earnest?'
'It is absurd in you to pretend simplicity,' said Alda, sitting upright, and looking at him earnestly. 'Here is such an opportunity as you may never have again. This arrangement must have been made on purpose to remove all scruples.'
'Nay, Alda,' interrupted Felix, in a tone of regret and shame at the subject and the time. 'If there were no objection, this arrangement would be the greatest in itself,' and as she looked at him incredulously, 'don't you see that he has set me to do a brother's part to her? anything to interfere with that would be both unfair and cruel.'
'She knows nothing of such ridiculous refinements as you work yourselves up to. Besides no one wishes you to do anything at once; only you ought to have it in your mind, and might be making way all the time.—Felix,' as she saw his face and gesture, 'you don't mean that you are so absurdly fastidious. I call that quite wrong—in your position, too—and when she is the dearest best-hearted girl in the world!' added Alda, with more genuine feeling.
'True, Alda; I esteem her goodness and generosity too highly to treat her with the disrespect and insincerity such a course would imply.'
'Nonsense! as if it would not be the greatest kindness to save her from fortune-hunters!'
Felix smiled. 'What should I be myself?' he said. 'I must speak plainly, to put this out of your head. Nothing else would lead me to this, and in me it would be especially abominable, because I am the only man in the family able to be of any use to her; and besides, I am not only poor, and in a lower grade, but I have so many dependent upon me.—Don't you see?'
'I only see that you are obstinate and unreasonable, throwing away all my pains to guard her for you!'
Felix could not but laugh a little ironically as he said, 'Thank you.'
'You think it mere fancy,' said Lady Vanderkist, nettled into proving her words by an exposure of herself; 'but she would have had that young Travis two years ago, if I had not managed to give him a hint before he got involved.'