“I quite agree with you,” he replied, dryly.
“Then,” said Mary, getting more angry, “why should you praise Captain Beverley’s dancing in that sort of way, as if you were dispraising everything else he does? I think he has it in him to do many things well—more, probably, than have as yet come in his way.”
“I dare say you are quite right,” said Mr Cheviott. “For a man,” pursued Mary, somewhat mollified, “he is still very young.”
“Peculiarly so,” said Mr Cheviott; “he is very young for his actual years. You must have seen a good deal of him, Miss Western, to judge him so correctly.”
“I have said very little about him,” said Mary, bluntly, looking up in her companion’s face with a questioning expression in her eyes, before which Mr Cheviott quailed a little—yet what pretty, gentle, brown eyes they were!—“but I have seen a good deal of him,” she went on, frankly. “He has been a great deal with us lately, while he was staying at the Edge Farm, you know.”
Almost as she pronounced the words, she became conscious of the annoyance they were causing her companion, and she felt that her worst misgivings were realised. “Why did I dance with him?” was the first form in which her hot indignation expressed itself in her thoughts.
“Yes,” replied Mr Cheviott, coldly, “I heard that Mr and Mrs Western had been very hospitable to my cousin, and no doubt he is very grateful to them. He is an extremely sociable person—cannot bear being alone. As you have seen so much of him, Miss Western, I dare say you have discovered that he is very impulsive and impressionable, very ready to amuse himself, without the least thought of the after consequences.”
Mary remained perfectly silent.
“You agree with me?” said Mr Cheviott. “I am very glad of it, for I see you will not misunderstand me. There are some kinds of knowledge not so easily acquired as French,” he added, with an attempt at carrying off what he had been saying lightly, “but I see your good sense stands you in lieu of what is commonly called knowledge of the world, and—and, for your sister’s sake especially, I am very glad indeed that you have so much perception.” He did not look at Mary as he spoke, but now she suddenly turned towards him, and he was obliged to face her. Every ray of their usually pretty colour had faded out of her cheeks; she looked so very pale that for an instant he thought she was going to faint, and a quick rush of pity for the poor child momentarily obliterated all other considerations. But Mary saw the softening expression that came over his face, and smiled slightly, but bitterly. And then Mr Cheviott saw that her paleness was not that of timidity or ordinary agitation, but of intense, wrathful indignation, and he thereupon hardened his heart.
“Why,” said Mary, after a little pause, and her voice, though low, was distinct and clear—“why, may I ask, do you say that it is especially on my sister’s account that you are glad to find that I possess what you so kindly call so much power of perception?”