“I fear much you thought me very strange the last day you came to Greystone,” she began, with some timidity, but on the whole less trepidation than he had expected. “I know well you did see me on the road, and it grieved me—indeed it grieved me to seem deceitful. But I was so frightened, oh! oh! so frightened, that my aunt would be very angry. And I would not for all the world make her angry. She is so very good for me. And I thank you so much that you did not insist that it was me that you had seen.”
Mr. Guildford was rather taken aback by the calmness of this confession—the girl did not seem by any means ashamed of herself, even though tacitly owning that her conduct deserved her aunt’s serious displeasure—he walked on (they were just now on a comparatively speaking level piece of ground, a sort of landing between the flights of stairs), for a few moments in silence; then he said abruptly,
“Why do you do what would make Mrs. Methvyn angry, if you dread her anger so much?”.
“I could not help it—indeed I could not,” said Geneviève penitently, without appearing in the least to resent his tone. “I was obliged to go to Greybridge, and at the first I did not think how it might displease my aunt.”
Mr. Guildford grew still more puzzled.
“I didn’t know you had been at Greybridge,” he said. “It was not there I saw you—indeed it was not very far from home. It wasn’t on account of—of the distance from home I thought Mrs. Methvyn would be displeased.”
“How then?” exclaimed Geneviève, looking up at him in perplexity. “What else for could I have feared? I went but to Greybridge to the post-office—” and in a few words she explained to him the reason of her secret expedition—the same reason that she had given to Mr. Fawcett, the wish to post unobserved the letter she feared she might be “thought silly” for having written. It sounded sincere enough, indeed; so far as her explanation went, it actually was so, but still Mr. Guildford felt puzzled. Was she telling him all? Had there been no second motive for her walk? Hitherto Mr. Fawcett had not been named, and it had actually not occurred to Geneviève that he was in any way connected with Mr. Guildford’s disapproval of her behaviour. So she looked up with some anxiety, but without embarrassment, to read in her companion’s grave face the effect of her explanation. And something in her expression made him ashamed of his suspicions, though it was not without an effort that he made up his mind to discard them.
“I have done you injustice, Miss Casalis,” he said at last, and I beg your pardon. Don’t you see that if I had had any idea that the mere fact of your being out on the road would have displeased your aunt, I would not have mentioned it so carelessly and casually as I did?”
“Yes,” said Geneviève, after a little cogitation; “I see, but I understand not. You saw nothing wrong, yet you spoke as if you thought I had done wrong. What then was there?”
“There was nothing,” replied the young man, half annoyed, half inclined to laugh. “I should have thought nothing of seeing you walking along the road, had you not immediately shown me you were afraid of its being known, Then, of course, I began to wonder why, and pitched upon the most natural explanation. Now I know why you were afraid, so there is nothing more for me to say except to repeat that I am sorry for having misunderstood you.”