“I see. You think I have been behaving badly?”
He stammered.
“I didn’t know perhaps—whether—you have been such a little while here—whether you had come across the Oxford gossip. I wish sometimes—you know I’m an old friend of your uncle—that it could be settled. Little Miss Alice has begun to look very worn.”
Constance walked on, her eyes on the ground. He could see the soft lace on her breast fluttering. What foolish quixotry—what jealousy for an ideal—had made him run this hideous risk of offending her? He held his breath till she should look at him again. When she did, the beauty of the look abashed him.
“Thank you!” she said quietly. “Thank you very much. Alice annoyed me—she doesn’t like me, you see—and I took a mean revenge. Well, now you understand—how I miss mamma!”
She held out her hand to him impulsively, and he enclosed it warmly in his; asking her, rather incoherently, to forgive his impertinence. Was it to be Ella Risborough’s legacy to him—this futile yearning to help—to watch over—her orphaned child?
Much good the legacy would do him, when Connie’s own will was really engaged! He happened to know that Douglas Falloden was already in Oxford again, and in a few more days Greats would be over, and the young man’s energies released. What possible justification had he, Sorell, for any sort of interference in this quarter? It seemed to him, indeed, as to many others, that the young man showed every sign of a selfish and violent character. What then? Are rich and handsome husbands so plentiful? Have the moralists ever had their way with youth and sex in their first turbulent hour?
CHAPTER VIII
This little scene with Sorell, described in the last chapter, was of great importance to Connie’s after history. It had placed her suddenly on a footing of intimacy with a man of poetic and lofty character, and had transformed her old childish relation to him—which had alone made the scene possible—into something entirely different. It produced a singular effect upon her that such a man should care enough what befell her to dare to say what he had said to her. It had been—she admitted it—a lesson in scrupulousness, in high delicacy of feeling, in magnanimity. “You are trifling with what may be the life of another—just to amuse yourself—or to pay off a moment’s offence. Only the stupid or cruel souls do such things—or think lightly of them. But not you—your mother’s daughter!”
That had been the meaning of his sudden incursion. The more Connie thought of it, the more it thrilled her. It was both her charm and her weakness, at this moment, that she was so plastic, so responsive both for good and evil. She said to herself that she was fortunate to have such a friend; and she was conscious of a new and eager wish to win his praise, or to avoid his blame.