“I have never met Mr Gresham since that day at Dorriford,” and the substitution of the vaguer participle for the more definite “seen,” did not catch Miss Lermont’s attention. Yet her perplexity increased.
“She did change colour when she heard his name and she was uneasy when she heard of the Bertrams being here,” thought Maida. “Yet I know she is not only truthful, but candid. The very way she told me there was something she could not tell, shows it. Can it be merely that her sister has got it into her head that Mr Gresham would be a good parti, which I suppose he would be, for her sister, and that some hints of hers have annoyed Philippa? She is almost morbidly sensitive, I know. I suppose it must be that.”
But feeling the girl’s eyes fixed upon her, she hastened to reply to her last words.
“You are pretty sure to meet him here” she said. “There is scarcely a day on which we do not see or hear something of the Bertrams. So we shall have an opportunity of finding out if our silent friend can talk when he chooses to do so.”
“But you have had an opportunity of that already, have you not?” said Philippa. “Did you not say you had seen Mr Gresham since his arrival?”
“Yes, the day before yesterday, but only for a few minutes. He did talk, I must allow. He found time, as I said, to ask if I had heard from you lately. He may have said something of Evelyn and her husband having been with him, but if so, I did not pay attention. He is certainly a very handsome man, and the Bertrams think everything of him. I suppose he is made a great deal of, and if he is a little affected and spoilt, it is excusable.”
“Did he strike you as affected?” said Philippa. Now that she had got over the first start of hearing Mr Gresham’s name, she had pulled herself together and regained her composure. After all, it was not Michael; and when she recalled that quite recently she had been contemplating the possibility of accompanying the Headforts before very long on another visit to Merle, she realised the inconsistency of shrinking from meeting her sister’s late host in the present easy and informal circumstances. “I don’t think I can take Evelyn’s account of him quite without a grain of salt. She seems so fascinated by him.”
“And your brother-in-law?” said Maida. “I always like to hear a man’s opinion of a man, as well as a woman’s.”
“Oh, yes, Duke likes him very much, I think,” said Philippa. “He would not appreciate his charm of manner as Evelyn does, very possibly. Duke is a regular man, something of a boy about him, don’t you know, a little too rough and ready, perhaps. Then Evelyn knows Mr Gresham better. She saw a good deal of him at—at Wyverston,” and Philippa suddenly stooped to pick an innocent daisy looking up in her face from the grass at her feet, only to fling it down again impatiently, poor daisy!
Why had she mentioned Wyverston, she asked herself; why trench quite unnecessarily on ground where she could not be open and communicative with her friend, as she loved to be?