“No, indeed!”
“So my son means to have a dinner-party, and to show that we are all good friends, and pay them proper attention. A bad lot they are; there’s not one of them to be trusted.”
“But, Granny,” said Jack anxiously, “what do you think about Nettie? What secret can she have?”
“Eh, I can’t tell. He may be getting her a puppy or a creature of some kind; but Nettie’s secret may be one and Dick’s another. I always blamed Cherry for encouraging the Seytons about the place.”
“Poor Cherry!” muttered Jack to himself, with a great longing to throw the burden of his difficulty on to Cherry’s shoulders.
Nettie remained sullen and impenetrable. She treated Jack with an intense resentment that vexed him more than he could have supposed. Neither her father nor her grandmother asked her any questions; but she was watched, though not palpably in disgrace, and she suffered from an agony of shame and of self-reproach which contended strangely with the motive that in her view justified the stolen meetings. Whether her womanly instincts, roughly awakened, justified the warnings given her, or whether, she merely resented the unjust suspicion, she herself scarcely knew, and not for worlds would she have explained her feelings. The dread of giving an advantage, the intense sulky self-respect that leads to an exaggeration of reserve and false shame, was in her nature as in that of all the Lesters, and if Cheriton had been present she could not probably have uttered a word to him. Being absent, she could venture to soften at the thought of him, and cried for him many a time in secret.