‘That is the very temptation you have to resist,’ said Albinia. ‘Fight against it, pray against it, resolve against it; ride fast, and don’t linger and look after him.’
He looked desponding and miserable. If she could only have put a spirit into him!
‘Shall I walk and meet you sometimes before you get to Robbie’s Leigh!’
His face cleared up, but the cloud returned in a moment.
‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Only tell me. You know I wish for nothing so much as to help you.’
He did confess that there was nothing he should like better, if Archie would not be all the worse another time, whenever he should catch him alone.
‘But surely, Gilbert, he is not always lying in ambush for you, like a cat for a mouse. You can’t be his sole game.’
‘No, but he is coming or going, or out with his gun, and he will often come part of the way with me, and he is such a droll fellow!’
Albinia thought that there was but one cure. To leave Gilbert daily exposed to the temptation must be wrong, and she laid the case before Mr. Kendal with so much earnestness, that he allowed that it would be better to send the boy from home; and in the meantime, Albinia obtained that Mr. Kendal should ride some way on the Tremblam road with his son in the morning, so as to convoy him out of reach of the tempter; whilst she tried to meet him in the afternoon, and managed so that he should be seldom without the hope of meeting her.
Albinia’s likings had taken a current absolutely contrary to all her preconceived notions; Sophia, with her sullen truth, was respected, but it was not easy to like her even as well as Lucy, who, though pert and empty, had much good-nature and good-temper, and was not indocile; while Gilbert, in spite of a weak, shallow character, habits of deception, and low ungentlemanly tastes, had won her affection, and occupied the chief of her time and thoughts; and she dreaded the moment of parting with him, as removing the most available and agreeable of her young companions.