Lady Ella had found it necessary to make her first announcement standing behind him upon the hearthrug, but now she sat upon the arm of the great armchair as close to him as possible, and spoke in a more familiar tone.
The thing, she said, had come to her as a complete surprise. Everything had seemed so safe. Eleanor had been thoughtful, it was true, but it had never occurred to her mother that she had really been thinking—about such things as she had been thinking about. She had ranged in the library, and displayed a disposition to read the weekly papers and the monthly reviews. But never a sign of discontent.
“But I don't understand,” said the bishop. “Why is she discontented? What is there that she wants different?”
“Exactly,” said Lady Ella.
“She has got this idea that life here is secluded in some way,” she expanded. “She used words like 'secluded' and 'artificial' and—what was it?—'cloistered.' And she said—”
Lady Ella paused with an effect of exact retrospection.
“'Out there,' she said, 'things are alive. Real things are happening.' It is almost as if she did not fully believe—”
Lady Ella paused again.
The bishop sat with his arm over the back of his chair, and his face downcast.
“The ferment of youth,” he said at last. “The ferment of youth. Who has given her these ideas?”