“Oh, Evey!” she began, impulsively, but checked herself before saying more. What right had she to blame Evelyn, whose words would have been perfectly harmless but for her own unnecessary communication to Michael Gresham in the train? Still more, what could be less expedient than now, when the mischief was done, to startle and alarm her sister, and effectually destroy her ease and unconstraint during the few days they must still pass at Wyverston?
“No,” she decided in her own mind. “I must think it over by myself, and I must face it by myself. I have got Evelyn into the danger, and I must get her out of it at all costs. No one must ever be able to blame her in the least.”
But, oh! if she could but think that Michael had not caught the sense of Evelyn’s words—Evelyn called him “stupid;” but that he certainly could not be in the real sense of the word, for she had heard, even in the servants’-hall, allusions to the position he had gained for himself in his profession, but “unobservant?” Could she hope that his perceptions were not very keen? Many clever men were dull and slow in ordinary life, and by all accounts he did not shine in society. But even this flattering unction failed her as she recalled the keen, “interested” expression of his somewhat deep-set eyes, and the half-sarcastic, half-humorous lines of the whole physiognomy that first morning of meeting him in the wood—the unlucky morning when she had forgotten her spectacles, and in the exhilaration of the fresh air and novel surroundings had been far less on her guard than she now was.
All this train of thought passed through her mind far more rapidly than it takes to describe the process, so rapidly that she had made up her mind to silence as regarded Evelyn, before her sister had fully taken in the scant attention which Philippa was bestowing on her words.
“Philippa,” she exclaimed, at last catching sight of the girl’s grave face, “what are you thinking about? You are always very good at cheering me up when I am in low spirits, but I must say that when I am feeling bright and hopeful, and with good reason, you are not very sympathising. Don’t you care to hear about my plans?”
“Of course I do,” said Philippa, compelling herself to speak lightly, “but we have oceans of time before us to talk over everything in, and you have not too much time for a good night; it is getting very late, and if we go on talking you will never get to sleep.”
Evelyn was well-trained by this time; she made but faint resistance to her sister’s ultimatum.
Of the two it was certainly Philippa who found the greater difficulty in getting to sleep that night, and long before the dawn broke, she was wide awake again, revolving in her own mind the whole tormenting question of what to do, and how to do it.
“Or, after all,” said she to herself, “might it not be safer to leave things alone, and do nothing?”