Eglington spoke for her.
“Permit me to answer, neighbour,” he said. “I wished to speak with your daughter, because I am to be married soon, and my wife will, at intervals, come here to live. I wished that she should not be shunned by you and yours as I have been. She would not understand, as I do not. Yours is a constant call to war, while all your religion is an appeal for peace. I wished to ask your daughter to influence you to make it possible for me and mine to live in friendship among you. My wife will have some claims upon you. Her mother was an American, of a Quaker family from Derbyshire. She has done nothing to merit your aversion.”
Faith listened astonished and baffled. Nothing of this had he said to her. Had he meant to say it to her? Had it been in his mind? Or was it only a swift adaptation to circumstances, an adroit means of working upon the sympathies of her father, who, she could see, was in a quandary? Eglington had indeed touched the old man as he had not been touched in thirty years and more by one of his name. For a moment the insinuating quality of the appeal submerged the fixed idea in a mind to which the name of Eglington was anathema.
Eglington saw his advantage. He had felt his way carefully, and he pursued it quickly. “For the rest, your daughter asked what I was ready to offer—such help as, in my new official position, I can give to Claridge Pasha in Egypt. As a neighbour, as Minister in the Government, I will do what I can to aid him.”
Silent and embarrassed, the old man tried to find his way. Presently he said tentatively: “David Claridge has a title to the esteem of all civilised people.” Eglington was quick with his reply. “If he succeeds, his title will become a concrete fact. There is no honour the Crown would not confer for such remarkable service.”
The other’s face darkened. “I did not speak, I did not think, of handles to his name. I find no good in them, but only means for deceiving and deluding the world. Such honours as might make him baronet, or duke, would add not a cubit to his stature. If he had such a thing by right”—his voice hardened, his eyes grew angry once again—“I would wish it sunk into the sea.”
“You are hard on us, sir, who did not give ourselves our titles, but took them with our birth as a matter of course. There was nothing inspiring in them. We became at once distinguished and respectable by patent.”
He laughed good-humouredly. Then suddenly he changed, and his eyes took on a far-off look which Faith had seen so often in the eyes of David, but in David’s more intense and meaning, and so different. With what deftness and diplomacy had he worked upon her father! He had crossed a stream which seemed impassable by adroit, insincere diplomacy.
She saw that it was time to go, while yet Eglington’s disparagement of rank and aristocracy was ringing in the old man’s ears; though she knew there was nothing in Eglington’s equipment he valued more than his title and the place it gave him. Grateful, however, for his successful intervention, Faith now held out her hand.
“I must take my father away, or it will be sunset before we reach the Meeting-house,” she said. “Goodbye-friend,” she added gently.