“Oh, don’t fret about Charlie. He is all right now. He is not the man to lose the good of his life because a silly girl doesn’t know her own mind. ‘There’s as good fish in the sea,’ you know. If you are going to be sorry for any one, let it be for Rosie. She has lost a rare chance for happiness in the love of a good man.”
“But it may not be lost,” murmured Graeme.
“I am afraid it is,” said Harry, gravely. “It is not in Rose to do justice to Charlie. Even you don’t do it, Graeme. Because he lives just a commonplace life, and buys and sells, and comes and goes, like other men, you women have not the discrimination to see that he is one of a thousand. As for Rose, with her romance, and her nonsense, she is looking for a hero and a paladin, and does not know a true heart when it is laid at her feet. I only hope she won’t wait for the ‘hats till the blue-bonnets go by,’ as Janet used to say.”
“As I have done, you would like to add,” said Graeme, laughing, for her heart was growing light. “And Harry, dear, Rosie never had anybody’s heart laid at her feet. It is you who are growing foolish and romantic, in your love for your friend.”
“Oh! well. It doesn’t matter. She will never have it now. Charlie is all right by this time. Her high and mighty airs have cured him, and her flippancy and her love of admiration. Fancy her walking off to-day with that red-headed fool and quite ignoring Mrs Roxbury and her daughter, when they—Miss Roxbury, at least—wanted to see her to engage her for this evening.”
“He is not a fool, and he cannot help his red hair,” said Graeme, laughing, though there was both sadness and vexation in her heart. “The Goldsmiths might have called her ‘high and mighty’ if she had left them and gone quite out of her way, as she must have done, to speak to those ‘fine carriage people.’ She could only choose between the two parties, and I think politeness and kindness suggested the propriety of going on with her friends, not a love of admiration, as you seem determined to suppose.”
“She need not have been rude to the Roxburys, however. Charlie noticed it as well as I.”
“I think you are speaking very foolishly, Harry,” said Graeme. “What do the Roxburys care for any of us? Do you suppose Mrs Roxbury would notice a slight from a young girl like Rose. And she was not rude.”
“No, perhaps not; but she was polite in a way so distant and dignified, so condescending, even, that I was amazed, and so was Charlie, I know, though he did not say so.”
“Nonsense, Harry! Rose knows them, but very slightly. And what has Mr Millar to do with it?”