"I'm sure you're much more in love than you think," he declared, quickly, for he had the ghost of a temptation to tell her she was foolish to think any more of a love so uncertain as hers. There was enough jealousy of his standing at the Rectory to give him the impulse to rob Richard of his foothold, but the meanness destroyed itself on this virginal morning almost before Guy realized it had tried to exist. "Yes, I'm sure you're really in love," he repeated. "I think I can understand what you feel."
"Do you?" said Margaret, shaking her head a little sadly. "I'm afraid it's only a very willing sympathy on your part, for I'm sure I don't understand myself. That's why I'm conceited, perhaps. I'm trying to build up a Margaret Grey for other people to look at, which I admire like any pretty thing one makes oneself, and perhaps why I can't fall really in love is because I'm afraid of some one's understanding me and showing me to myself."
"You'd have to be very clever to disappoint that person," said Guy. "And why shouldn't Richard Ford be the one?"
"Oh, he'll never discover me," said Margaret. "That's what's so dull."
"Aren't you a little unreasonable?" Guy asked.
"Of course I am. Now don't let's talk about me any more; I'm really not worth discussing—only just because my family is so exquisite and because I adore them, I never talk about Richard to them. Here's the old woman's cottage. I sha'n't be more than a few minutes."
Guy felt honored by Margaret's confidence, but his heart was so full of Pauline that he transferred all the substance of what she had been saying to suit his own case. Would Pauline never know if she were in love? Would he be doomed to the position of Richard? Or worse, would Pauline fly from his love in terror of anything so disturbing to the perfection of her life at present? On the whole he was inclined to think that this was exactly what she would do; and he felt he would never have the courage to startle her with the question. When he thought of the girls to whom in the past of long vacations he had made protestations of devotion that were light as the thistle-down in the summery meadows where they were uttered, it was incredible that the asking of Pauline should speed his heart like this. With other girls he had always imagined them slightly in love with him, but for Pauline to be in love with him seemed hopeless, though he qualified his humility by assuring himself that she could be in love with nobody. Did Margaret really have a suspicion that he was in love with Pauline? If she had, why had she not drawn his confidence before she gave her own? She came out from the cottage as he propounded this, and he told her, when their faces were set towards Wychford and a chilly wind that was rising, how he had been thinking about her confidence all the while she was in the cottage. Moreover, he was under the impression this was the truth.
"But don't think about me any more," she commanded.
"Never?"
"Not until I speak first. Isn't it cold? You must have been frozen waiting for me."