“I am so relieved; Sibyl so often does not behave charmingly, that you don’t wonder that I should ask you the question.”
“She has a very great respect for you,” said Lord Grayleigh; “it makes me think you a better woman to have a child regard you as she does.”
Mrs. Ogilvie fidgeted; she had seated herself on a low rustic chair, and she looked pretty and elegant in her white summer dress, and her hat softening the light in her beautiful eyes. She toyed with her white lace parasol, and looked, as Sibyl had looked a short time ago, across the lovely summer scene; but in her eyes there shone the world with all its temptations and all its lures, and Sibyl’s had made acquaintance with the stars, and the lofty peaks of high principle, and honor, and knew nothing of the real world.
Lord Grayleigh, in a kind of confused way which he did not himself understand, noticed the difference in the glance of the child and the woman.
“Your little girl has the highest opinion of you,” he repeated; “the very highest.”
“And I wish she would not talk or think such nonsense,” said Mrs. Ogilvie, in a burst of irritation. “You know well that I am not what Sibyl thinks me. I am an ordinary, everyday woman. I hope I am”—she smiled—“charming.”
“You are that, undoubtedly,” said the nobleman, slightly bowing his head.
“I hope I am what a man most likes in a woman, agreeable, charming, and fairly amiable; but I am no saint, and I don’t want to be. Sibyl’s attitude towards me is therefore most irritating, and I am doing my utmost——”
“You are doing what?” said Lord Grayleigh. He rose, and stood by the summer-house door.