Winnington's look grew sterner.
"I appeal again to your father's memory," he said with energy.
He perceived her quickened breath, but she made no no reply.
He walked away from her, and stood looking out of the window for a little. When he came back to her, it was with a change of manner and subject.
"I should like you to understand that I have been doing all I could to carry out your wishes with regard to the cottages."
He drew a paper out of his pocket, on which he had made some notes representing his talk that morning with the agent of the Maumsey estates. But in her suppressed excitement she hardly listened to him.
"It isn't exactly business, what we've done," he said at last, as he put up the papers; "but we wanted you to have your way—about the old woman—and the family of children." He smiled at her. "And the estate can afford it."
Delia thanked him ungraciously. She felt like a child who is offered sixpence for being good at the dentist's. It was his whole position towards her—his whole control and authority—that she resented. And to be forced to be grateful to him at the same time, compelled to recognise the anxious pains he had taken to please her in nine-tenths of the things she wanted, was really odious: she could only chafe under it.
He took her back to the drawing-room. Delia walked before him in silence. She was passionately angry; and yet beneath the stormy currents of the upper mind, there were other feelings, intermittently active. It was impossible to hate him!—impossible to help liking him. His frankness and courtesy, his delicacy of feeling and touch forced themselves on her notice. "I daresay!"—she said; "—but that's the worst of it. If Papa hadn't done this fatal, foolish thing, of course we should have made friends!"
* * * * *