"If you will not try alone, neither will you even if Claude Lorraine came to cut your pencils."
"I wish," said Wilton, "I had a chance of cutting yours."
"But you have not," she returned, with a sort of indolent gravity not in the least coquettish, and a pause ensued. Wilton had seldom felt so adrift with any woman; perfectly frank and ready to talk, there was yet a strange half-cold indifference in her manner that did not belong to her fair youth, and upon which he dared not presume, though he chafed inwardly at the mask her frankness offered.
"I suppose you are kept very much in the house with your—pupil?" asked Wilton.
"Sometimes; he has been very unwell since I came back. But he has a pony-carriage, and he drives about, and I drive it occasionally; but it pains him to walk, poor fellow! He is interested in some things. He wished much to see you and hear about the Crimea and India."
"I am sure," cried Wilton, with great readiness, "I should be most happy to see him or contribute to his amusement—pray tell him so from me."
"No, I cannot," with a shake of the head; "Lady Fergusson is so very good she thinks everything wrong; and to walk upon a country-road with a great man like you would be worse than wrong—it would be shocking!"
Wilton could not refrain from laughing at the droll gravity of her tone, though in some indefinable way it piqued and annoyed him.
"Well, they are all out of the way—they have driven over to A——. Have they not?"