Damaris hedged. To expose the root of her trouble became impossible under the coercion of that gently bantering tone.
"It's not Henrietta's going; but that I no longer mind her going."
"A lost illusion—yes?" he said.
"I can't trust her. She—she isn't kind."
"Eh?" he said. "So you too have made that illuminating little discovery. I supposed it would be only a matter of time. But you read character, my dear, more quickly than I do. What it has taken you months to discover, took me years."
His frankness, the unqualified directness of his response, though startling, stimulated her daring.
"Then—then you don't really like Henrietta?" she found audacity enough to say.
"Ah! there you rush too headlong to conclusions," he reasoned, still with that same frankness of tone. "She is an ingenious, unique creature, towards whom one's sentiments are ingenious and unique in their turn. I admire her, although—for you are right there—she is neither invariably trustworthy nor invariably kind. Admire her ungrudgingly, now I no longer ask of her what she hasn't it in her to give. Limit your demand and you limit the risks of disappointment—a piece of wisdom easier to enunciate than to apply."
Lean, graceful, commanding under the cloak of his present gentle humour, Charles Verity sat down on the faded red cushion beside Damaris, and laid one arm along the window-ledge behind her. He did not touch her; being careful in the matter of caresses, reverent of her person, chary of claiming parental privileges unasked.
"In the making of Henrietta Frayling," he went on, "by some accident soul was left out. She hasn't any. She does not know it. Let us hope she never will know it, for it is too late now for the omission to be rectified."