“But you would have refused?”
“Isn’t it always safest,” said Flora diffidently, and yet with the implacable certainty of rightness, too, “isn’t it always safest, when there’s a choice—or what looks like a choice—to do whatever one likes least?”
“Lucilla!” called the Canon’s voice.
She opened the door.
“No, I shouldn’t call that a very good rule, myself. You’ll let me know about Ethel as soon as you can, won’t you? Her month’s trial will be up next Wednesday.”
“Lucilla!”
“I’m coming, Father.”
She went.
Flora let her work drop into her lap and folded her hands, allowing her thoughts to wander.
Could it be right to feel that the wrong-doing of another might prove to be one’s own opportunity, come at last? She felt herself to have striven for so long with the endeavour to prove faithful in that which was least, all the time stifling resentment that no greater, more heroic task should be set her. She had always felt herself to be “little Flora” to her father, a child, to be petted and sheltered, and in the minute introspection of a nightly examination of conscience, she had frequently to reproach herself bitterly for an ungrateful longing to emerge sometimes from the shielded into the shielding. If Lucilla went away, their father would be alone, deserted except for Flora. David was in India. He wrote very seldom, and then never of coming home. Even his letters to Flora herself, always his favourite sister, were neither confidential nor frequent. Val was married, in Canada, and was claiming Lucilla’s presence almost as a right. Adrian, in London, was the subject of daily intercession at St. Gwenllian but it was known to all his children that the Canon would not again receive Adrian at home until he should have severed all connection with the atheist, Hale.