The Result of Incoherence.
Millie, with shame at her own appropriation, which, looked back upon, appeared excessive, decided that Fanny had been bored that night, and no wonder, with so floundering an acquaintance thrust upon her! She admired her friend, penitently, for that last offer of a plank of refuge, and hoped that bashfulness might prevent his accepting it.
“Why were you so kind, Fanny?” she remonstrated. “I am sure you had done all that could have been expected of you!”
“Oh, and more. He never expects,” said Lady Fanny, musingly. “One ought to do something for the helpless. You, at any rate, might be obliged to him.”
It was Mrs Ravenhill who asked why?
Lady Fanny considered that he made a second centre of conversation, and, cried out at, maintained her assertion.
“First you have to discover what he has to say, and then to help him to say it. It is very absorbing.”
“I think you might have been more helpful, then,” Mrs Ravenhill remarked, smiling. “For a long time you left him to me, and what did I know of what he had to say! And I don’t approve of your laughing at him, for he is a good man, and carries it in his face.”
“Is goodness pink?” asked Fanny, with an innocent air. The next moment she cried out, “Oh, don’t listen to me! Good? He is better than all of us put together. The poor love him. You don’t know how he has changed the place where he has been working. Even Milborough hasn’t a word to say against him. There was a young fellow at Huntsdon going to the bad as fast as he could, and Mr Elliot got hold of him and never let go again—that’s the only way of describing it. It was splendid. And then one makes much of these little trifles, as if they mattered! as if they could compare with the real thing!”
And once more Milly caught a gleam in the grey Irish eyes, which, if it had been possible, looked like tears.