He might not have thought what he was doing—it is but charity to suppose so; that he spoke only after his usual careless and somewhat presumptuous style of speaking about all women, but he must have been struck by the horrified expression of Miss Gascoigne's face.
"Sing duets together! a young man in your position, and a young woman in hers! Without a mother, too!"
"Oh, her father was generally present, if you think of propriety. But I do assure you, Miss Gascoigne, there was not the slightest want of propriety. She was a very pretty girl, and I was a young fellow, rather soft, perhaps, and so we had a—well, you might call it a trifling flirtation. But nothing of any consequence—nothing. I do assure you."
"Of course it was of no consequence," said Aunt Maria, again breaking in with a desperate courage. And still more desperate were the nods and winks with which she at last aroused even Aunt Henrietta to a sense of the position into which the conversation was bringing them both, so that she, too, had the good feeling to add,
"Certainly it is not of the slightest consequence. Dr. Grey is probably aware of it all?"
"Which may be the reason I am never invited to the Lodge," laughed the young man, so pleasantly that one would hardly have paused to consider what he laughed at or what it implied. "By-the-by, I hear they had such a pleasant gathering there last night—a musical evening, where every body sang a great deal, and Mrs. Grey only once, but then, of course, divinely. I should like to hear her again. But look, there are the children. Shall I take the liberty of unfastening for them the latch of your garden gate?"
He sprang out of the low window, and came back heading the small battalion of visitors—Phillis, Arthur, Letitia, and Oliver. But Mrs. Grey was not there. She had come half way, and returned home alone.
"Well, I must say that is very odd, considering I invited her to spend the day, and, I think, rather disrespectful of me—to us both, Maria."
"She might have been tired after the party last night," put in Aunt
Maria.
"No, she wasn't tired, for she never told me so." said Arthur. "She told me to say—not you, Phillis, mother always trusts me with her messages—that she had gone back on account of papa's wanting her, and that if he came to fetch us, she would come here with him in the evening."