Bram, shocked beyond measure, recoiled at the bare mention of this suspicion in connection with the girl he worshipped. The next moment he cast the thought behind him as utterly base, and felt that he had disgraced himself and her by the momentary harboring of it.
But as for Mr. Cornthwaite, Bram felt that he hated the smug, elderly gentleman, who troubled himself not in the least about the helpless, friendless girl who loved his son, and whose only thought was to hurry his son into a heartless marriage in order to “save him from” the danger of his repairing his supposed error.
In these circumstances, Bram lost all self-consciousness, all remembrance of his unaccustomed dress, of his attitudes, of his awkwardness, and entered the drawing-room utterly absorbed in thoughts of Claire. Old Mrs. Cornthwaite, who was fumbling about with a lapful of feminine trifles, smelling-bottle, handkerchief, spectacle-case, dropped one of them, and he hastened to pick it up.
“Thank you,” said she, with a gracious, good-humored smile, “you are more attentive than any of the grand folk.”
“Mamma,” cried Hester in fidgety exasperation. And good-naturedly fearing that he might have been hurt by her mother’s lack of tact, she opened the old-fashioned, but not unhelpful, album of photographs, which lay on a table near her, and asked him if he cared for pictures of Swiss scenery.
“Not much, Miss Hester,” said Bram.
But he went up to the table, encouraged by her kind manners, by the honest look in her eyes, in the hope that he might find a supporter in her of the cause he had at heart.
“But I should like to see some photographs of you and Mr. Christian, if you have any.”
She opened another album, smiling as she did so, and offering him a chair near her, which he immediately took.
“I never show these unless I am asked,” she said. “Family photographs I always think uninteresting, except to the family.”