‘Your friend, my dear, I trust,’ says Miss Manning gently, taking the girl’s hand in both her own and regarding her with anxious eyes.
Ella flushes crimson. She has so dreaded, so feared, this moment, and now this gentle, sad-eyed woman, with her soft voice and pretty impulsive speech! Tears rise to the girl’s eyes. Nervously, yet eagerly, she leans forward and presses her lips to Miss Manning’s fair, if withered, cheek.
Wyndham, congratulating himself on the success of his latest enterprise, takes himself off presently to inspect a farm five miles farther out in the country, that had been left to him by his mother, with the Cottage. He has determined on taking the Rectory on his way back to meet the evening train—to enlist further Mr. Barry’s sympathy for his tenant. He tells himself, with a glow of self-satisfaction, that he is uncommonly good to his tenant; but so, of course, he ought to be, that dying promise to the Professor being sacred; and if it were not for the affection he had always felt for that great dead man, he would beyond doubt never have thought of her again.... There is much moral support in this conclusion.
Yes, he will spend half an hour at the Rectory. He can get back from the farm in plenty of time for that, and Miss Manning being an old friend of the Rector’s, the latter will be even more inclined to take up her pupil, which will be a good thing for the poor girl. He repeats the words ‘poor girl,’ and finds satisfaction in them. They seem to show how entirely indifferent he is to her and her fortunes. That mental slip of his awhile ago had alarmed him slightly. But ‘poor girl,’ to call her that precludes the idea of anything like—pshaw!
He dismisses the ‘poor girl’ from his mind forthwith, and succeeds admirably in getting rid of her, whilst blowing up his other tenants on the farm. But on his way back again to Curraghcloyne her memory once more becomes troublesome.
To-day, so far, things have gone well. She has seemed satisfied with Miss Manning, and Miss Manning with her. And as for the fear of an immediate scandal, that seems quite at rest. But in time the old worry is sure to mount to the surface again. For example, when Mrs. Prior hears of her—he wishes now, trudging grimly over the uneven road, that he had not led that astute woman to believe his tenant was a man—as she inevitably must, there will be a row on somewhere that will make the welkin ring; and after that, good-bye to his chances with Lord Shangarry, who has very special views about the right and the wrong.
If only this silly girl could be persuaded to come out of her shell and mingle with her kind, all might be got over after a faint wrestle or two. But no! Angrily he tells himself that there is no chance of that. Soft as she looks, and gentle, and lov—h’m—he kicks a stone out of his way—and pleasant-looking, and all that, he feels absolutely sure that nobody will be able to drag her out of her self-imposed imprisonment.
After this diatribe, it is only natural that he should, on entering the Rectory garden, feel himself a prey to astonishment on seeing, amongst a turbulent group upon the edges of the tennis-court, the ‘poor girl’ laughing with all her heart.
He stands still, within the shelter of the laurels, to ask himself if his eyesight has failed him thus early in life. But his eyesight still continues excellent, and when he sees the ‘poor girl’ pick up Tommy and plant him on her knee, he knows that all is well with his visual organs.