“They are very natural,” he replied kindly. “And, of course, though I am interested in this little girl—she is very sweet—I can’t but be far more interested in you, dear Florrie, and I believe you are more unselfish than you allow.”
Florence looked and felt pleased. A little praise from Rex went a long way with her.
“Then you’ll see what you can do,” she said, persuasively. “You would find her in the library at the present moment; better catch her red-handed, or red-eyed rather, and then she cannot deny her troubles.”
Poor Major Winchester! He had been promising himself a peaceful half-hour to finish his letter to Eva; but after all it was too late for to-day’s post. “It wouldn’t really go any sooner,” he reflected, “so I suppose I may as well.”
Still, it was not without an effort that he went off to the library on his benevolent quest.
Yes; Imogen was there, busily reading or making believe to do so, in a corner. The Fells library was a large and imposing room, filled with books, the most valuable of which seldom left their shelves except to be dusted. But everything about the house was well kept and well managed. Not being of a literary turn himself, nor possessing children with strongly developed intellectual tastes, was no reason, said the Squire, why there should not be a good library. And he had engaged the services of a properly qualified person to look after it, so that the volumes were clean and well arranged, and from time to time added to.
This, however, was not one of the librarian’s days, so Imogen had it all to herself. A gallery ran all round, to which there were two means of access—a stair at one end of the room itself, and a door from an upper passage in the house; for originally the library had been a ballroom, with a musicians’ balcony, since discarded. Rex glanced round once or twice before he discovered Miss Wentworth, half-hidden in a big leather arm-chair by the fire. He smiled as he saw her.
“She is not so very upset after all,” he thought. “Ten to one she is very happy over a novel, and won’t thank me for disturbing her.”
But it was not so. Imogen was both angry and unhappy, and she was only pretending to read. She glanced up quickly at the sound of Major Winchester’s approaching footsteps, and a gleam of pleasure came over her face, to be, however, almost instantly replaced by a flush of shame and mortification as she became conscious of her swollen eyes and tear-stained face.
“What are you studying?” said Rex, as he sat down beside her. “Oh, Great Expectations. Why, you must have read that long ago!”