“You might understand,” he said, speaking in a lower tone of voice, and with something of reproach, “You might understand how inexpressibly annoying it was to me for anything of the kind to happen to you; above all, when you were in the position of my guest.”
He glanced at her with a kind of delicate inquiry in her eyes, and the accent on the pronoun made Philippa’s cheeks flush.
“Don’t mind about it, I beg of you,” she said, earnestly. “Promise me you will not mention it to Mrs Worthing. I scarcely know her at all, and—and—she might not be nice about it. You have been so kind,” she went on; “you have done so much to add to the pleasure of my time here, that I should hate to think it could be associated with anything disagreeable. Please promise me,” she repeated, in conclusion.
He smiled.
“I am afraid I should find it difficult not to promise you anything you liked to ask,” he said. “Well, then, we will let the matter drop. I am so glad, so delighted that you have enjoyed your visit here; and if I have in the very least added to your amusement, as you so kindly say, I need scarcely assure you that I am repaid a thousandfold.”
Then he went on to speak, in his most attractive way, of meeting again in England; of Evelyn and her husband; of “Charley,” whom he had heard of and would be so pleased to meet; exerting himself so tactfully to talk of the things which he knew interested her the most, that Philippa forgot the painful shock she had experienced, or only recalled it to make light of her own exaggerated fears.
“After all,” she said to herself, “at the very worst I did nothing wrong, nothing really to feel ashamed of. And if—if I were ever to get to know Mr Gresham better—really very well indeed, I could make him understand it all. Even that rough, surly Michael was kind about it, and Bernard is infinitely gentler and less harsh judging than he. No; I need not be unhappy.” And that night when she passed Maida’s room, of which the door was slightly ajar, and heard Miss Lermont’s voice saying, softly:
“Philippa, dear, is that you? Have you enjoyed yourself?” she answered brightly, as she went in for a moment:
“Enjoyed myself? I should think so. I have never been so happy in my life.”
The words and tone gave Miss Lermont much subject for thought. Was this to be the girl’s fate, then? Was she destined to be one of the favoured few to whom the good things of life come almost before life has really begun? Was it to be a case of “true love running smooth,” one of the exceptions to prove the rule? It looked like it. And in the eyes of the world—and that not of the thoroughly “worldly” world either—such a marriage for Philippa Raynsworth would be not only brilliant, but excellent in every possible way.