“Ferrar is appointed to his place, papa says; and a new man to Ferrar’s.”
“Ferrar is! I am glad of that: very. He deserves to get on.”
“But Ferrar is not a gentleman, is he?” objected Coralie.
“Not in one sense. There are gentlemen and gentlemen. Mark Ferrar is very humble as regards birth and bringing-up. His father is a journeyman china-painter at one of the Worcester china-factories; and Mark got his learning at St. Peter’s charity-school. But every instinct Mark possesses is that of a refined, kindly, modest gentleman; and he has contrived to improve himself so greatly by dint of study and observation, that he might now pass for a gentleman in any society. Some men, whatever may be their later advantages, can never throw off the common tone and manner of early habits and associations. Ferrar has succeeded in doing it.”
“If Pym stays on shore it may bring us further complication,” mused Coralie. “I should search for Verena myself then—and search in earnest. Papa and old Ozias have gone about it in anything but a likely manner.”
“Have you any notion where she can be?”
“Just the least bit of notion in the world,” laughed Coralie. “It flashed across me the other night where she might have hidden herself. I don’t know it. I have no particular ground to go upon.”
“You did not tell Sir Dace?”
“Not I,” lightly answered Coralie. “We two sisters don’t interfere with one another’s private affairs. I did keep back a letter of Vera’s; one she wrote to Pym when we first left home; but I have done so no more. Here comes some tea at last!”
“I should have told,” I continued in a low tone. “Or taken means myself to see whether my notion was right or wrong.”