Evelyn shook her head.
“I can’t say. I didn’t like to ask Mrs Shepton anything that she did not tell, but she is a very fair, just-minded woman. She did not say anything about Mr Gresham—Bernard, I mean—one way or the other. But she said a great deal about how proud Michael is. I should think it is most probable that Bernard has offered to help him, but that he has refused it.”
“Yes,” said Philippa, consideringly. “And then besides if—if he looked upon his arrangement with his grand-uncle as a compact, I daresay he would think it not strictly honourable to take any of his money, even from its present possessor. Still—”
“Still what?” said Evelyn, with some impatience.
“I was only going to say that I think Mr Gresham might have done—well something to help Michael on.”
“And how do we know that he has not? I feel almost certain he has tried to do so at any rate. You remember he used the word ‘quixotry’ in talking to you of Michael. Ten to one he was thinking of his cousin’s refusal to take anything from him.”
“Perhaps so,” said Philippa, somewhat absently. Evelyn felt slightly irritated with her, and half inclined to blame herself for her own communicativeness.
“Philippa is so fantastic,” she thought. “Very likely she will now begin making a hero in earnest of Michael Gresham, and blaming Bernard for what he probably deserves no blame for.”
But she scarcely understood her sister. Philippa’s thoughts were certainly occupied with the two men, but not exactly to the disparagement of the elder. She was only comparing the two in her mind and saying to herself how little she would have credited Michael with the delicacy and sensitiveness of feeling he evidently possessed.
“He must be almost a grand character,” she thought. “And I only saw his roughness and hardness. I never would have thought him so capable of devotion as he must have been to his mother. What a hard life he has had! It makes it seem easy for any one to be kind and considerate as Mr Gresham is, when one knows how smooth things have been for him in comparison. Still, prosperity might have made him hard and indifferent; it often does. And that I cannot think he would ever be.”