She obeyed, but said: “Well, I don’t know that I am greatly concerned, but there is something amiss, and I believe you are the proper person to be told of it.” She then, in the baldest of terms, recounted to him the story Marianne had poured out to her. “I should perhaps not have set much store by it had it not been for what Theo told me later. Marianne was greatly agitated, but that, I think, was largely because she has no brothers, and is consequently unaccustomed to scenes of violence.”
“Unlike Miss Morville?”
“Dear me, yes! In fact, I think it a pity that Marianne did not run away at once, for then, you know, they might have had what Jack calls a regular set-to, and I have little doubt they would have enjoyed it excessively, and parted the better friends. At least,” she added thoughtfully, “it is what I should expect of most men, but I own Martin is a little different.”
“That he tried to force a quarrel on to Lucy I can believe, but that Lucy should let him do it certainly surprises me.”
“I do not know, of course, what gentlemen consider to be insupportable provocation, but I imagine Martin might offer such provocation?”
“With enthusiasm,” he agreed. “The devil fly away with that boy!”
“He is very troublesome. But, although you may not like me to say this, I feel that he has not been quite properly treated. He did receive — and Marianne is fully conscious of it — a degree of encouragement which makes him not altogether to be blamed for his intemperate behaviour.”
“Oh, I know it! If she were not so innocent, one might call her an arrant flirt.”
“I am sure she had never the least intention of causing unhappiness.”
“No, the mischief lay in his being too young to rate her pretty smiles at their true worth, and in her being too young to recognize that Martin was no man for her playful arts. What a stupid business it is! Are you expecting me to settle it?”