“Didn’t it really ever strike you,” he said, “that Fenwick cared?”
After a moment’s hesitation, she answered with a change of manner and a laugh—
“Oh, how like a man! When he takes a fancy he thinks every one else must be possessed with it too!”
She ceased, however, to urge him, for good-tempered as he was, he could stick to his point, and she saw that he was resolved not to go again to Huntingdon. He had made this determination partly because he could not see Claudia without disturbance, and his healthy nature objected to the stirring up of emotions which could lead to nothing; and partly because in spite of Miss Arbuthnot’s taunt he was persuaded that Fenwick liked Claudia, and a love of fair play inclined him to keep out of the way at a moment when his rival might be supposed to be at a disadvantage. It would not have changed his conduct had he known the truth, that, in his disabled condition, Fenwick, passive, was making such way as he might never have done had he been about as usual.
Only Miss Arbuthnot’s pertinacity had led to the conversation. She did not renew it, and he was not the man to care to talk of his own feelings. At the end of a few days better news arrived from Huntingdon, and Helen departed as suddenly as she had come. Then it was that Harry became more restless. Thornbury had too many bitter-sweet recollections, Huntingdon was too easily within reach, at Elmslie he might hear something of Claudia, and at Elmslie he would meet with Anne Cartwright’s tender sympathy, never wanting in tact. At Elmslie, accordingly, he presented himself one day, unannounced, but certain of welcome.
It was Philippa’s shrewdness which first discovered that the times were out of joint.
“Something has happened,” she said to Anne, “and whatever it may be, take my word that Claudia is at the bottom of it.”
“Why?” said Anne, startled. “He hasn’t talked of her at all.”
“And that’s why,” retorted Philippa. “When he left he was on the way to talk a great deal.”
“Then do you suppose?”