“So you or Nasmyth have been tracing up the family!”
“No,” she replied with a little sharpness. “Why should I have done so? Of course, we knew the name; and you have relations living at no great distance. I understand Nasmyth got a hint that they would be glad to receive you.”
“Let it go at that,” he answered. “My father was cast out because he dared to think for himself and my mother was Canadian born. I’m a unit in the new nation; one of the rank and file.”
She considered this for a moment or two. It was hardly an English point of view, but—for his family had long been one of station—there was a hint of pride that struck her as rather fine about this renunciation. It was a risky thing to insist on being taken at one’s intrinsic value, stripped of all accidental associations that might enhance it, but she thought he need not shrink from the hazard. Now and then he spoke with slightly injudicious candor, and sometimes too vehemently, but in essential matters he displayed an admirable delicacy of feeling and she recognized in him a sterling sense of honor.
“I’ve broken loose again and you’re feeling shocked,” he said humorously. “It’s your own fault; you have a way of making one talk. There’s no use in discoursing to people who don’t understand. However—and it’s much more important—how’s the book getting on?”
“More important than my wounded susceptibilities?” Millicent laughed. “But we won’t mind them. I’m pleased to say I’ve heard from the publishers that it’s in strong request. Indeed, they add, rather superfluously, that the demand is somewhat remarkable, considering the nature of the work.”
Lisle laughed at this.
“Any more reviews?”
She handed him several and he noticed the guarded, unenthusiastic tone of the first two.
“These are the people who prefer a thing like a catalogue. This fellow says the first portion of the book shows most care in particulars and classification—it’s what one would expect from him. That was your brother’s work, I think. He was not an imaginative person.”