“Would you really like to know?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, I was thinking that girls are all the same—very little satisfaction to be got out of any of them.”
“That means me, I suppose,” said Mary, slightly nettled.
“Perhaps,” replied Mr Morpeth, coolly. “You see, Miss Western, I did think you such a particularly sensible girl.”
“I dislike being considered a sensible girl more than anything you could say to me,” interrupted Mary.
“There you go!” said Mr Morpeth. “As I was saying, I thought you, till to-day, a very sensible girl—not like my sisters, who are forever flying out about something or other—and this afternoon you have really been so very uncertain and queer-tempered—”
“I know I have,” interrupted Mary again, stopping short as she spoke. “Mr Morpeth,” she went on, “we shall be meeting the others again directly. Will you be really so very kind as to say nothing more about this afternoon and all the trouble I have given you? I don’t think I am generally uncertain and queer-tempered, but I have really been a good deal worried and troubled lately, and—and I think if I could explain all you would say there was a little excuse for me.”
There was something very like the glistening of tears in the brown eyes; it was almost too dark to see, but the voice suggested enough to soften Mr Morpeth’s heart—far more boyish and impressionable than he would have liked to own to. A new idea struck him.
“Perhaps, after all, she had some reason for disliking that fellow,” he thought—“perhaps she knows more of him than she allows, and he has fallen in love with her—she is really awfully pretty—and is pestering her to marry him though she hates him. And her people are so poor, Mrs Greville says—”