“Darling,” Mrs Wentworth replied, “it is rather for you to tell me; I had no idea, my pet, that things had gone so far.”
But though her tone was playful, it failed to raise any smile on Imogen’s face.
“I don’t know how you mean. I had no idea that—” But here she stopped short.
Imogen was really truthful, and the remembrance of her morning’s cogitations just then returned inconveniently to her mind. Mrs Wentworth smiled.
“I see,” she said; “you do well to stop short, my pet. Well, well, poor old mothers must expect to be treated with reserve at such times, I suppose.”
Imogen raised herself on her elbow.
“Mamma,” she said, very gravely, “I am telling you the literal truth when I say that I did not in the least expect anything like this. Nothing that Major Winchester has said or done has led me to think that—that it was anything more than that he just liked me, and, in time, possibly—when I was older—”
“You have been too unconscious, too simple and ingenuous to see it, my sweet. Thank God we have had to do with a good and honourable man, who has not taken advantage of your innocence,” said Mrs Wentworth with a burst of real feeling. “But others have seen it, if you have not.”
“Have they?” said Imogen, opening her eyes. Then some of Trixie’s remarks recurred to her, and she blushed a little. “Do you mean, mamsey,” she went on, “that this,” and she touched the letter, “is what one would call a proposal? It isn’t like what they are in books.”
“It is almost more than a proposal,” her mother replied. “It is as if he was quite sure of you—as if you quite understood each other. Have you not given him more encouragement than you quite realise, my pet?”