It was certainly true that Winifred was at this moment holding her head with a little touch of stateliness. She had heard a good many of the flattering words which had been poured upon Anthony, and perhaps valued them at even less than they were worth, and it vexed her to see their effect upon him. Something in his nature courted the pleasant popularity and the spoiling. Is it women only who care for such pretty things? He might have told you that he despised them, but the truth was that they made a sunshine in which he liked to bask, a delight which was not without its influence. Winifred, who saw the weakness, was not merciful: she was a woman, with, perhaps, a grain of jealousy sharpening her perceptions, and rendering them sufficiently keen to probe the feminine flatteries which fell so sweetly upon him, and it is probable that, although a woman who loves—even unconsciously—sets herself, often unconsciously too, to study the character of the man she loves with a closeness of purpose, and an almost unerring instinct, swift to unravel its inmost workings, Winifred did not at this time rightly understand him. What she condemned as vanity was rather an almost womanish sensitiveness, to which the sunshine of applause might be said to have been needful. If it was withdrawn, he might either shrink or become bitter and morose. Perhaps there are two sides even to faults, and the people who love us best are sometimes our most severe judges: no one there thought hardly of Anthony, except Winifred, who would have had none of these little flaws, and sat, carrying her shapely head a little scornfully, as Mr Featherly had noticed. Anthony, on his part, was not long in discovering her displeasure, although unconscious of the cause. It provoked him, and he would not look in her face when the ladies went out of the dining-room.
Marion had drawn her into the balcony to pour out some of her hopes and fears about Marmaduke, and the two were talking eagerly when Ada Lovell came out, followed by such of the gentlemen as had come up stairs.
“I have been envying your good fortune to Mr Miles,” she said, with an innocent air of admiration. “Of course you can see all his poetry whenever you like. It must be so delightful.”
“Only I never do,” said Winifred, standing upright. “I don’t care for poetry unless it is the very best.”
Woman like, she felt a pang in her own heart the instant she had sent forth her shaft. She glanced quickly and almost imploringly at Anthony, to see how sharply he was hit. If he had looked at her he might have known that she had flung down her weapons, and was waiting to make amends. But he would not look. He saw nothing of the involuntary grace of her attitude, as she stood in the glow of the sweet evening light, a little shamefaced and sorry, with a tender rosy softness in her face. He only felt that she had tried to wound him, and was angry with her for the second time that evening. Ada Lovell, looking up at him with admiring awe, had no such pricks with which to make him wince, and, perhaps, it was to be expected that he should devote himself to her for the remainder of the time. Winifred made no more advances. She stood leaning against the railing, looking gravely down upon the tall white lilies that by degrees grew and glimmered out of the dusk, until Mr Milman joined her. Marion and Marmaduke talked in a low voice at one end. People came out now and then, declared the dew was falling, and made a little compromise by sitting round the window, past which the bats flitted softly. Mr Mannering was telling clever stories, and making every one laugh. The Squire called his daughter at last. He disliked being kept waiting, and she went hurriedly, but as she passed Anthony she made a little pause to say gently,—
“Good-night, Anthony.”
“Good-night.”
There are some things which rest in our minds with quite a disproportionate sense of heaviness. Winifred knew that she should see Anthony the next day, by which time he would have forgotten her offence, but she seemed to have lost some of the confidence which ordinarily grew out of such a knowledge, for she could neither forgive herself nor forget the sound of his cold good-night.