“Yet,” thought Maida to herself, “yet, is he really good enough for her?”
Forty-eight hours after the ball saw Mr Raynsworth and his daughter started on their journey home.
Chapter Nineteen.
Good News.
“Well, mother,” said Evelyn Headfort, one morning, a fortnight or so after the return of the two wanderers to Greenleaves, “I hope you are satisfied now that it was not my fancy about Mr Gresham? I have not said anything hitherto about it. I thought I would wait till you could judge for yourself; but I am sure you have had time to hear everything Phil has to tell by this.”
“But,” began Mrs Raynsworth, “if there were anything of that kind to tell, Philippa would be more likely to tell nothing.”
She smiled a little at her own rather “Irish” way of expressing herself.
“Of course, mother dear,” said Evelyn, with a touch of impatience. “Of course I know that. What I mean is, that you can judge. I don’t dream for a moment that she is the sort of girl to tell even you of the conquests she has made. But to me—and I don’t suppose Philippa has said as much to me as to you. I have been so busy, you see, getting ready for Wyverston,” for the Marmaduke Headforts were on the eve of starting for a visit to the north, “and Duke wanting me every two minutes—but even judging by what she has said to me, I feel no doubt about it whatever. It is in her own hands. He fell in love with her that first afternoon at Dorriford. I shall always say so.”
“Well, time will show,” replied Mrs Raynsworth. She seemed slightly nervous, or rather disinclined to discuss the subject. But Evelyn, though a little disappointed, was not suspicious of there being any other reason for her mother’s reticence than Mrs Raynsworth’s extreme, perhaps exaggerated delicacy.
“I don’t know about that,” she replied. “There are ways and means of preventing ‘time’s showing.’ It does not do to be a fatalist in such matters, any more than in any others, mamma. If Phil chooses to—well, to discourage its going any further, either actively or tacitly, nothing is easier than for a girl to discourage a man; no one will ever believe there was anything in it! At least no one would ever be sure that there had been. I do not call that ‘time’s showing;’ I should call it girl’s perversity.”
Mrs Raynsworth hesitated.