“Of course that is for Mrs. Methvyn to decide,” said Mr. Guildford. “But—”.
“But what then?”
“I would much rather not say anything more about it,” said Mr. Guildford. “I was going to say, ‘but if you were my sister’ but you are not my sister, Miss Casalis.”
“But let it be—let me suppose myself your sister, what then? Say then,” she persisted, looking up in his face with a half tearful anxiety, the rosy lips still quivering with agitation.
More to humour her and give her time to recover herself than with any real intention of advising or warning her, Mr. Guildford went on, smiling as he did so,
“If you were my sister then, Miss Casalis (and if I had a young sister like you, you don’t know what care I should take of her), I should try to make you understand that a girl like you cannot be too careful—that you are very beautiful, and that a young man like Mr. Fawcett would naturally find your society charming, but that in the world in which he lives there are many beautiful and charming girls who must be far more worldly wise, whose hearts cannot possibly be as fresh and tender as yours.”
Geneviève understood him. She grew scarlet, and again the tears welled up into her lovely, troubled eyes.
“Of course,” pursued Mr. Guildford, “I am speaking in the dark. There may be circumstances which I am ignorant of—very probably there are—which make your position towards Mr. Fawcett a perfectly unconstrained one. To you he may actually seem what we have been imagining I might have been to you, a brother—a sort of a brother, I should say?”
“How?” asked Geneviève sharply.
“Well, a brother in the sense in which Miss Methvyn must seem a sister to you. I only say this because if it is so, all I have said must have seemed ludicrously inappropriate—I have no wish to pry impertinently into your relations’ family affairs.”