"I hope not. Oh no! Cecil begins to be tolerably sure of his election, and he will have you to thank for it. Mr. John Short blesses you every hour of the day."
Bessie laughed lightly. "I did good unconsciously, and blush to find it fame," said she.
A fear that her brother's success with Miss Fairfax might be doubtful, though his election was sure, flashed at that instant into Miss Burleigh's mind. Bessie's manner was not less charming, but it was much more intrepid, and at intervals there was a strain of fun in it—of mischief and mockery. Was it the subacid flavor of girlish caprice, which might very well subsist in combination with her sweetness, or was it sheer insensibility? Time would show, but Miss Burleigh retained a lurking sense of uneasiness akin to that she had experienced when she detected in Miss Fairfax, at their first meeting, an inclination to laugh at her aunt—an uneasiness difficult to conceal and dangerous to confess. Not for the world would she, at this stage of the affair, have revealed her anxiety to her brother, who held the even tenor of his way, whatever he felt—never obtrusive and never negligent. He treated Bessie like the girl of sense she was, with courtesy, but without compliments or any idle banter; and Bessie certainly began to enjoy his society. He improved on acquaintance, and made the hours pass much more pleasantly at Brentwood when he was there than they passed in his absence. This was promising. The evening's dinner-party would have been undeniably heavy without the leaven of his wit, for Mr. Logger, that well-known political writer, had arrived from London in the course of the afternoon, and Lady Angleby and he discoursed with so much solemn allusion and innuendo on the affairs of the nation that it was like listening surreptitiously at a cabinet council. Sir Edward Lucas was quite silent and oppressed.
Coming into the morning-room after breakfast on the following day armed with a roll of papers, Mr. Logger announced, "I met our excellent friend Lady Latimer at Summerhay last week; she is immensely interested in the education movement."
Mr. Fairfax and Mr. Cecil Burleigh instantly discovered that it was time they were gone into the town, and with one compunctious glance at Bessie, of which she did not yet know the meaning, they vanished. The roll in Mr. Logger's hand was an article in manuscript on that education movement in which he had stated that his friend Lady Latimer was so immensely interested; and he had the cruelty to propose to read it to the ladies here. He did read it, his hostess listening with gratified approval and keeping a controlling eye on Miss Fairfax, who, when she saw what impended, would have escaped had she been able. Miss Burleigh bore it as she bore everything—with smiling resignation—but she enjoyed the vivacity of Bessie's declaration afterward that the lecture was unpardonable.
"What a shockingly vain old gentleman! Could we not have waited to read his article in print?" said she.
"Probably it will never be in print. He toadies my aunt, who likes to be credited with a literary taste, but Cecil says people laugh at him; he is not of any weight, either literary or political, though he has great pretensions. We shall have him for a week at least, and I have no doubt he has brought manuscript to last the whole time."
Bessie was so uncomfortably candid as to cry out that she was glad, then, her visit would soon be over; and then she tried to extenuate her plain-speaking, not very skilfully.
Miss Burleigh accepted her plea with a gentleness that reproached her: "We hoped that you would be happy at Brentwood with Cecil here; his company is generally supposed to make any place delightful. He is exceedingly dear to us all; no one knows how good he is until they have lived with him a long while."
"Oh, I am sure he is good; I like him much better now than I did at first; but if he runs away to Norminster and leaves us a helpless prey to Mr. Logger, that is not delightful," rejoined Bessie winsomely.