“What were you going to write then?” said Cicely, glancing at the table.
“I don’t know. I thought, perhaps, I would write a letter to mamma, and then show it to you to see if you liked it.”
“About going home?”
“Yes.”
Cicely was silent for a moment or two. And then she said quietly and very gravely,
“Geneviève, though perhaps you don’t like me very much, you trust me, don’t you? Don’t you believe that I have wished to be kind to you, and that I would like you to be happy?”
“Yes, I think so,” said Geneviève half reluctantly. With Cicely’s eyes fixed upon her, it would have been difficult to speak other than truthfully, and her nature was neither brave nor enduring. She was already prostrated by trouble. All defiance was fast dying out. She was willing to do whatever Cicely advised. “I think I trust you,” she repeated; “but, oh! Cicely, you do not quite understand. I do not think, perhaps, you could understand—you are wiser and better—how I am miserable.”
She looked up in her cousin’s face with great tears in her lovely brown eyes. When Geneviève allowed herself to be perfectly simple and straightforward, she could be marvellously winning. Even at this moment her cousin recognised this. “I hardly wonder at him,” she said to herself. “There is little fear that he will not love her enough.”
“Poor Geneviève,” she said aloud, “I am very sorry for you. I wish you had let yourself trust me before. I might have saved you some of this unhappiness. I am not much older than you, but I might have warned you, for you were so inexperienced. I would have prevented things going so far. You know the first wrong thing was your getting into the habit of seeing my cousin so much alone—of meeting him and going walks with him.”
“I know now,” said Geneviève meekly, “but I did not at first—truly, I did not. I thought—oh! I cannot say to you what I thought.” She hid her face in her hands. “I had heard,” she went on, “that in England young girls were left free to arrange, tout cela for themselves. I knew not it was not convenable what I did. But Cicely,” she exclaimed in affright, “how do you know all that you say—what am I telling you?”