Once Godfrey came over on business about the estate, and came to call. He had lost his boyish manner, and had caught his brother’s gravity and reticence.
“Ah!” said Mrs Palmer, afterwards, when he had somehow extracted the fact that Constancy was working hard at college, and thinking of nothing but her examinations, “I’ve always known that boy admired Cosy. He’s too young for her, and Ingleby wouldn’t suit her at all. But clever girls often take to handsome men with nothing in them.”
“But Godfrey Waynflete has a good deal in him, Aunt Con.”
“Well, he hasn’t much to say. I expect Guy was too clever for old Mrs Waynflete, and wouldn’t give her her own way. But what Cosy will do when she comes home, I can’t think. She’ll never find enough to occupy her talents. I wish she would marry—some one who could give her a career.”
Florella did not pass over to her aunt a letter which she had just received from Constancy.
That Florella had powers of an unusual kind, except for painting, was an idea that had never formulated itself in the elder girl’s mind. Nevertheless, she was always open with her, and was never quite happy under her disapproval. She wrote—
“People ought not to have to decide on their future lives till they are thirty at least. I feel so extremely young sometimes. It’s much easier to learn moral philosophy than to find it make any difference in one’s life. I shall go in for society, and see if that has a developing effect. New sorts of people teach one more than hooks. I got heaps of ideas from Mrs Waynflete. All that business life was so new to one. I do like meeting new kinds of people. Every one here is so groovy. University life is very narrow. It is much more original and interesting, if you have brains, to spend them on doing than on learning. Mrs Waynflete was far cleverer than any literary woman. I am glad Guy is better, and that ‘Mr Godfra’,’ as old Cooper called him, is being such a good boy, and minding his business. If you can manage a private interview with Rawdie, you might give him my love. The only thing I regret in the events of last summer, is that that enchanting beast’s former master promised to get me a similar puppy. And now that chance is lost to me for ever. Well, I have no more time. If I don’t come a cropper, I believe Miss —, will offer me a lectureship here. Only in that way shall I think of coming back again. But I think a London winter would pay best. The tour with the Stauntons is the next thing, at any rate, and I mean to enjoy that to my heart’s content.” Florella mused over this letter. She thought it significant that Cosy should find time to speculate on life, when her final examination was imminent, and she understood the veiled allusion to the attentive professor, whose attentions, though she did not know it, had been so carefully brought to Godfrey’s notice by Cousin Susan. She had always thought that Cosy had liked Godfrey better than she had chosen to confess. But she had done her best to offend him, and with her sister he was stiff and shy. Besides, there was a general belief that he was engaged to Jeanie. He did not look very happy, and Guy had never dropped a hint of such an arrangement, and always managed to put Godfrey in a favourable light, in any chance mention of his name.
But Florella had heard Cuthbert Staunton call him a “young ruffian,” and she could not think him good enough for her brilliant sister. He was certainly on Constancy’s conscience; but whether he was also on her heart, was a different matter. On the whole, Florella hoped not.