She obeyed, lingering.
“Greville, do you think you see no improvement in me to repay you for all the trouble you’ve taken?”
Now he laid down his paper, leaned his head back and surveyed her.
“No, I should not say that. You were uneducated and ignorant three years ago. You could sing a ballad with the vigour that nature gives—a poor allowance, by the way. Now your voice is trained in the Italian style, and, though you have hard work before you still, you can please the connoisseur. Your drawing-master speaks well of you, and Romney commended the landscapes you have lately attempted. You read expressively, if the subject is not beyond you. I have been pleased to see you reading Hayley’s “Triumphs of Temper,” from which you can certainly take a needful lesson. Your manners are excessively improved. You have laid aside the romping hoyden. I have seen you enter a room like a lady. You have certainly a taste for simple becoming dress, and—”
The praise was too much, too unexpected. She was at his knees in an instant.
“Then you’re pleased! Oh, dear, dear Greville! Then you love me? You know I tried to please my own Greville? Your poor Emma has not failed?”
Her sparkling, glowing face adored him. He continued with discouraging serenity.
“In these respects, though you still need much tuition, you have not failed. But what I aimed at, beyond all, was character. I wished to make you valued and respected. And there there is no improvement. You are utterly unrestrained, and so far as I am a judge will never have the secure future I hope for you.”
“What, Greville, not with you, who know, who pity me? Think what I was. Oh, consider! A poor village girl, and London, and men—oh, consider, I beseech you, what chance had I? Sure the faults in me were as little to be helped as my want of book-learning. And I will cure them! Don’t you see me try?”
She caught his hand and fondled it passionately against her panting bosom. He drew it away with reserve.