“Oh no; she is a good deal younger—nearly two years younger.”
Captain Chancellor’s eyebrows went up a little. His companion read his thoughts, though he said nothing.
“I think you fancy I am younger than I am,” she explained, with a little blush. “I am nearly nineteen. I suppose I seem younger from having been so little in society. This is the very first time I have ever been anywhere without Sydney, and I disliked it so much, I asked Mrs Dalrymple if I might come early with my father, as he was passing here, and stay with her little girls in the school-room till after dinner, so that I might be in the drawing-room when every one came in.”
Captain Chancellor smiled at her confession; but its frankness made it the more difficult to realise that she was not the mere child he had guessed her. “And that was how you came to be standing out there in the fog, ‘all forlorn,’ then?” he returned. “Do you know you really frightened me? I don’t know what I didn’t take you for. A Wareshire witch at the least, though I don’t know that I was far wrong.” (A quick upward glance, and a slightly puzzled expression on the girlish face, here warned him that he was venturing on untried ground.) “But I forgot,” he went on hastily, “you don’t belong to Wareborough, I think you said.”
“Oh, yes I do. You misunderstood me a little. I only said I did not know many people here, that is to say personally—I know nearly every one by sight. I have lived here all my life, but my father does not allow us to visit much.”
“I have no doubt he is wise. In a place like this, the society must be very mixed, to say the least.”
Miss Laurence looked slightly embarrassed. “It isn’t exactly on that account. My father never speaks of Wareborough in that way. I don’t like living here much, but,” she hesitated.
“But though one may abuse one’s home oneself, one can’t stand any other person’s doing so—above all a perfect stranger, isn’t that it?” said Captain Chancellor, good-humouredly.
“Not quite. A perfect stranger’s opinion can’t matter much, for it can only be founded on hearsay,” replied the young lady, with a smile.
Her powers of repartee promised to be greater than he had expected, and Beauchamp Chancellor was not fond of repartee when exerted at his own expense. But he covered his slight annoyance by an increasingly paternal tone to his young companion. “Believe nothing you hear, and only half you see. You are rather too young to have adopted that motto yet, Miss Laurence; are you not? But after all, I don’t feel myself very guilty, for you own to not liking Wareborough yourself. You don’t really belong to it, do you? I can’t get it into my head that you do.”