"I wish you only knew how thoroughly in earnest I am," he said, passionately. "You cannot realize how much better I feel when with you; what a good influence you have over me. This is not flattery."
"It sounds very much like it," said Margaret, turning her grave young face towards him, and allowing a little smile to light up her eyes.
"Now you are laughing at me," he said, in a hurt tone. "How can I make you believe me?"
"Here comes your mother," said Margaret, much too unconscious of his meaning to be in the least embarrassed. "You have done your best to amuse me, and if you have failed it must be my own fault—not yours."
She turned lightly from him and he watched her with wrathful looks. Why did she always turn his speeches aside, and treat him as of no consequence? What was it that caused him so completely to fail with her? Why was it she was so different from other girls?
Grace, for instance, accepted his speeches (in which he was conscious of no meaning) as her due, with evident satisfaction. She believed everything he said to her, implicitly; and when, as sometimes happened, he showed something of his real strong devotion for Margaret to appear, she accepted it as if it were an indirect compliment to herself. Her vanity was of the open and undisguised order, and so completely enveloped her, that no sarcasm could wound, no snub hurt her; and he was often sarcastic, and often unintentionally snubbed her, and repented, till he saw that both were equally lost upon her.
What a delightful thing it must be to live encased in an armour of this kind; to be impervious to those friendly and unfriendly hits the world at large thinks good for poor humanity.
Grace had not much acquaintance with the world, but the few people she knew never could touch her, and Mr. Paul Lyons was sometimes astonished and sometimes amused to see how she sailed through her life, delighting in the idea that every one round shared her own supreme belief in her superiority.
How hard he tried to get Margaret to believe in him a little—forced to confess, time after time, that he had failed. She was always the same, sweet, cold, and utterly indifferent.
Lady Lyons' efforts to obtain information from Mrs. Dorriman were equally failures in another direction. What could she tell, being herself in utter ignorance of her brother's position?