And Major Winchester, too, felt a little cheered. He began to have hopes of Florence, and he realised, though by no means for the first time, that his own sorrows were not without their brighter side. Then he was touched, even gratified, by Imogen’s confidence in him, and he felt that she deserved some return. So he devoted himself to her anew, and this time their talk called for less effort on his part—they seemed to grow rather more on a level, as half unconsciously the conversation became of a somewhat personal kind.
“I’m sure Mrs Wentworth will say I did right in preventing your going over to the enemy in that traitorous fashion; don’t you think so?” Major Winchester began. He spoke in a light half-rallying tone, for at first Imogen preserved her dignified silence, and he felt uncertain as to how the ground lay.
The girl gave her head the very slightest possible toss, as she replied:
“Mamma trusts me to look after myself. Indeed, she asks my advice more often than I do hers. Mamma hasn’t a very decided character, and I’m afraid I have.”
Rex was silent.
“Are you shocked?” said Imogen with a touch of apology, or at least timidity. And she glanced up at him from under her long eyelashes, like a naughty but repentant child.
”‘Shocked?’ no. That tone about one’s elders is too common nowadays to shock,” he said quietly. “But I own it would disappoint me in you if I thought you really meant it. It was your tenderness to your mother that—that first”—“made me feel an interest in you,” he was going to have said, but the words struck him as priggish and patronising. Imogen blushed, but he did not see her blush, and he went on speaking:
“It reminded me a little of my own sister,” he said. “She was my elder sister, and my mother was an invalid for many years. One of my clearest remembrances since early boyhood is of Angey’s unfailing care and tenderness about our mother.”
He seemed to be “thinking back,” as I have heard a child express it. Imogen, glancing up again, caught the look in his face and respected it.
“You say ‘was.’ But your sister is not dead?” she hazarded after a little.