“Oh, yes, he is a gentleman, of course, and Mrs Shepton says he is very kind-hearted and everything good. But, oh, mamma, I have a perfect horror of ever seeing him again; I felt so—so degraded, when I had, as it were, to throw myself on his mercy. You cannot think what it felt like,” and she shivered slightly.
Mrs Raynsworth did not at once answer. She seemed to be thinking deeply. Then she said:
“Philippa, my child, it will not do any good, or undo what cannot be undone, for you to allow yourself to grow morbid about it. Put it out of your mind as far as it is possible for you; you owe it to us all to do so, now that there is nothing more to explain, and that all is forgiven. Promise me that you will try to do this.” Philippa sighed deeply.
“Yes, mamma, I will try. I know it is the least I can do when you—papa and you—are so very, very good to me,” her voice trembled a little. “I will try. But do promise me, dear mamma, that if the question comes up of my going to Merle-in-the-Wold with Evelyn and Duke—they are sure to go some time or other—you will help me to get out of it? That is not morbid.”
No, under the circumstances, Mrs Raynsworth could scarcely call it so, as nothing was more probable, almost certain, than that Michael Gresham would be one of the party at his cousin’s. Under the circumstances, however, she much doubted if Evelyn’s zeal for a visit to Merle would hold good, though this opinion she kept to herself.
“I will promise never to urge you to do anything as painful to you as this idea seems at present,” Mrs Raynsworth replied. “And perhaps,” with a little sigh—for unworldly though the mother was, it could scarcely be that Evelyn’s glowing description of the master of Merle, and the evident “admiration at first sight” which her sister had aroused in him, had made no impression on the maternal imagination—“perhaps your instinctive dread of meeting the younger Gresham again is well founded.”
“I am sure of it,” said Philippa, in a tone of relief. “And, oh, mamma, there is one thing we—I—should be glad of, and that is that Charley did not come here while we were away. Of course,” (as had been the case) “his last letter—the last before we left—showed it was unlikely; but everything unlikely seems to have happened to me! And I could not bear him to know what I did—he would be furious.”
“Yes,” Mrs Raynsworth agreed, “I am afraid he would be. And I see no reason why he should ever hear of it. We took care not to let Hugh and Leonard know where you had gone. I just told them that you had gone away again unexpectedly for a few days. I believe they had some vague idea that you had been summoned back to Dorriford.”
And after that first evening, though with no definite parti pris on the subject, Philippa’s eccentric escapade was practically buried.
Circumstances greatly helped to bring this about. For the very next morning came the looked-for news of Charley’s definite return—a return “for good,” as his people had got into the way of calling it. He was to stay at home, indefinitely at least, working at the special branch of literature which he had made his own, and in which his father’s advice and experience were of great value to him, and acting at the same time as Mr Raynsworth’s secretary, thus relieving his younger sister from the somewhat onerous duties of the last year or two.