In spite of philosophy, Wareham felt keen inclination to fall foul of this assurance. Mrs Ravenhill said briskly that she hoped things might turn out well for the young man, for there was something very attractive about him. She asked Wareham whether he would dine with them on the following day, with a sort of apology.
“We don’t give dinner-parties, but we have shared a good many indifferent meals together of late.”
“Thank you—I am afraid I am leaving London to-morrow,” he said hesitatingly. The next moment he added—“After all, I don’t see why I shouldn’t afford myself the pleasure. I will put off going until Tuesday.”
Lady Fanny drew her own conclusions, and they were favourable. For a man to stay in London for the sake of dining with three women, she felt, spoke volumes. Her own experience in signs was so much more extensive than that of either Mrs Ravenhill or Millie, that she looked on them from heights as a professor would look at a tyro, and smiled at the mothers unconsciousness, and at Millie’s—to her—evident perturbation. She longed to cry at her—“Dear, don’t be a goose! Take your due, or you will never have it!” but comforted herself with the reflection that perhaps Wareham was used to women who expected much, and that Millie’s absence of assertion might constitute her charm. The censor thought it bad for him, and her fingers tingled with the wish to teach a lesson, but it must be remembered that she judged him as an incipient lover; and that her haste for the happiness of her beloved Millie led her to jump at unwarrantable conclusions. They would have amazed Wareham, who felt that here he was free from the heated atmosphere in which he had lived of late.
Prudent Fanny avoided comments, of which she knew the danger. She contented herself with remarking that evening to Mrs Ravenhill—
“I am so glad you asked Mr Wareham to dine. I am sure it was a tribute to my curiosity.”
“To be candid, I believe it was because I thought I must, after having seen so much of him in Norway, but I am glad if it pleases you. Were you really curious to meet him?”
“Of course I was. Ever since I heard that you had travelled with Miss Dalrymple and Mr Wareham, I have felt that life had been unfairly generous to you for a whole fortnight, and I was so dull all that time! The most humdrum people you ever saw were collected at Thorpe. Whatever wits I possessed before were sat upon, and the poor things don’t yet know whether they may peep out again.”
Millie remarked that she appeared to have amused herself.
“No, no, no such thing! Neither myself nor any one else. And there were you with an author, a beauty, and a revived romance. How could you come away?”