'You correspond with him?'
'I may not be the only one.'
'Foolish aunty! How can you speak to me in that senseless way?' cried Aminta. 'You know the schemer he is, and that I have no protection from his advances unless I run the risk of bloodshed.'
'My dear Aminta, whenever I go into society, and he is present, I know I shall not be laughed at, or fall into that pit of one of their dead silences, worse for me to bear than titters and faces. It is their way of letting one feel they are of birth above us. Mr. Morsfield—purer blood than many of their highest titles—is always polite, always deferential; he helps me to feel I am not quite out of my element in the sphere I prefer. We shall be travelling alone?'
'Have you any fear?'
'Not if nothing happens. Might we not ask that Mr. Weyburn?'
'He has much work to do. He will not long be here. He is absent to-day.'
Mrs. Pagnell remarked: 'I must say he earns his money easily.'
Aminta had softened herself with the allusion to the shortness of his time with them. Her aunt's coarse hint, and the thought of his loss, and the banishment it would be to her all the way to Steignton, checked a sharp retort she could have uttered, but made it necessary to hide her eyes from sight. She went to her bedroom, and flung herself on the bed. Even so little as an unspoken defence of him shook her to floods of tears.