“One would suppose that Mr Everitt and I had once been acquainted, and that something had made us fall out! The truth, however, is simply that we have never known each other, and that circumstances have made it pleasanter that we should remain unknown.”
“That is all very well for you, but you might consider poor Mr Everitt. He thinks you are hopelessly displeased with him, and naturally that places him in a most uncomfortable position.”
“Then, just because he is disagreeable to me, I am to consent!” cried the girl impatiently.
Mrs Marchmont rapidly shifted her ground.
“You can’t deny,” she asserted, “that he behaved with the utmost delicacy in refusing to come here to-day.”
“I don’t know what I should have thought of him or of you, if he had been here,” replied Kitty.
She carried things, indeed, with so high a hand, that Mrs Marchmont was quite disconcerted. Her attempt had failed at least as completely as Jack’s, and she began to experience a sensation of defeat to which she was altogether unaccustomed. It seemed really probable that these two provoking young persons, in whom, in spite of vexation, she daily took a deeper interest, would so obstinately persist in nullifying her good offices as entirely to prevent her from achieving their happiness. Nothing, it must be owned, could be more tiresome than such conduct. And yet she could not feel as angry with them as they deserved. She was even conscious of a little compunction as she noticed the graver lines on Kitty’s sweet face.
And Kitty herself?
She had answered Mrs Marchmont with a becoming spirit, and so far she looked back upon their talk with satisfaction. But, to tell the truth, she could not quite forgive herself for thinking so much about the matter as she had to acknowledge she was thinking, and though she had professed a lofty indifference to Everitt’s conduct, her mind dwelt upon it with a good deal of approval. Perhaps, in spite of her words, she was beginning to think less of that unfortunate business with the model, and to remember Everitt’s face in the chapel on Sunday, and the manner in which he had refused to avail himself of his cousin’s proposal, jack’s story made a kindly background for his hero.
After all, and notwithstanding Mrs Marchmont’s despair, it is possible that her arrangement had not been so complete a failure as it appeared to herself.