"If she had been kinder, now, and had let love conquer?" insinuated Kilrush.
"She would not have been Clarissa; she would not have been the long-suffering angel, the martyr in virtue's cause."
"Prythee, my lord, do not laugh at my daughter's high-flown sentiments," said Thornton. "I have done my best to educate her reason; but while there are romancers like Samuel Richardson to instil folly 'tis difficult to rear a sensible woman."
"That warmth of sentiment is more delightful than all your cold reason, Thornton; but I compliment you on the education which has made this young lady to tower above her sex."
"Oh, my lord, do not laugh at me. I have just learnt enough to know that I am ignorant," said Tonia, with her grand air—grand because so careless, as of one who is alike indifferent to the effect of her words and the opinion of those with whom she converses.
Kilrush prolonged his visit into a second hour, during which the conversation flitted from books to people, from romance to politics, and never hung fire. He took leave reluctantly, apologizing for having stayed so long, and gave no hint of repeating his visit, nor was asked to do so. But he meant to come again and again, having as he thought established himself upon a footing of intimacy. A Grub-Street hack could have no strait-laced ideas—a man who had been in jail for something very like larceny, and who had educated his young daughter as a free-thinker.
"She finds my conversation an agreeable relief after a ten years' tête-à-tête with Thornton," he told himself, as he picked his way through the filth of Green Street to Leicester Fields. "But 'tis easy to see she thinks I have passed the age of loving, and is as much at home with me as if I were her grandfather. Yet 'twas a beautiful red that flushed her cheek when I entered the room. Well, if she is pleased to converse with me 'tis something; and I must school myself to taste a platonic attachment. A Lovelace of seven and forty! How she would jeer at the notion!"
Lord Kilrush waited a fortnight before repeating his visit, and again called at an hour when Thornton was likely to be at home; but his third visit, which followed within a week of the second, happened late in the afternoon, when he found Antonia alone, but in no wise discomposed at the prospect of a tête-à-tête. She enjoyed his conversation with as frank and easy a manner as if she had been a young man, and his equal in station; and he was careful to avoid one word or look which might have disturbed her serenity. It was unflattering, perhaps, to be treated so easily, accepted so frankly as a friend of mature years; but it afforded him the privilege of a companionship that was fast becoming a necessity of his existence. The days that he spent away from Rupert Buildings were dull and barren. His hours with Antonia had an unfailing charm. He forgot even twinges of gout, and the burden of time—that dread of old age and death which so often troubled his luxurious solitude.
She grew more enchanting as she became more familiar. She treated him with as cordial a friendship as if he had been her uncle. She would talk to him with her elbows on the table, and her long tapering fingers pushing back those masses of glossy hair which the ribbon could scarcely hold in place. Stray curls would fall over the broad white brow, and she had a way of tossing those random ringlets from her eyes that he could have sworn to among a thousand women.