Once get Miss Marjory upon any of her pet themes, and she was certain to wax eloquent. Tor was quite content to listen, and the late experiences he had had of nineteenth-century culture inclined him to agree with Miss Marjory’s view of the case. Men are proverbially averse to the higher education of women.
‘Well, Miss Marjory,’ said Tor, ‘you will have that opportunity to-night; for I have asked Signor Pagliadini to dine here, and you will be able to tackle him to your heart’s content.’
‘To dine here!’ echoed Miss Marjory. ‘Why, I thought you were sworn foes.’
‘Not at all; we are nominally on excellent terms. In public he has not said one unpleasant word. It is in a private interview that he was so disagreeable. Whatever his motive is, he does not wish to drive me to strong measures. I believe I shall have fair warning if he makes up his mind to attack me.’
‘I will tackle him,’ said Miss Marjory, with a certain satisfaction in her tone. ‘I flatter myself I shall be able to discover who he is and what he wants.’
Tor was quite of the same opinion. He believed that Miss Marjory could do anything she had a mind to, and was content to hand over Signor Pagliadini to her tender mercies, to be turned inside out, or submitted to any other process that might seem good to her.
‘My sister and my aunt do not understand Italian,’ he went on to say, ‘so that they will not be a bit the wiser for any conversation which they may overhear.’
‘Ah, perhaps that is as well,’ said Miss Marjory.
Ethel Hardcastle and Maud Debenham had meantime struck up a great friendship, after the manner of young girls. Ethel was always ready to admire and adore anyone who was kind and pretty and good to her; and anything like a strong will or an originality of disposition struck her as something peculiarly desirable. Thus in a couple of hours’ time the young mistress of Ladywell, with her frank gracious ways, her fresh, charming face, and her saucy independent speech, had altogether bewitched the less-favoured but simple-minded Ethel, and Maud became the object of her youthful and generous enthusiasm.
Maud liked to be admired, and therefore she liked Ethel; and because she liked her, she waxed confidential; and an acute observer of human nature might safely aver that a stage had already been arrived at when long conversations in one another’s rooms at night, of a peculiarly and almost needlessly confidential character, would become inevitable.