“She is very troubled,” he thought. “I feel sure that it is about this affair of Horace’s. I wish I understood better. Why could he not have told me the whole?”
Frances walked on, her eyes bent on the ground, thinking deeply. Once or twice her companion hazarded some remark in hopes of drawing her into speech again. But she scarcely seemed to hear him. Then, suddenly, she looked up as if she had come to a decision.
“Mr Morion,” she began, “I am anxious and unhappy, as you have seen. Worst of all, I am utterly at a loss how to act, or rather how to advise others to act who look to me for advice. I had not, of course, the slightest idea that you were here, but yet you were one of the very few whom I wished I could tell about this trouble. You—and Madeleine—the only two, perhaps. Shall I tell you the whole?—regardless of the rather peculiar position you are in to both sides, as it were.”
“Perhaps I know more already than you suspect,” he said gently. “That may make it easier for you. It is about Horace Littlewood, is it not? and—your sister. Please do tell me exactly how things stand. I gather that you are free to do so. And please forget that I am myself—except in so far as my position towards all concerned might give me more power of judgment. You see, I know all the Littlewoods well. Horace’s mother is a good woman and means to be a just one. Don’t exaggerate about her. I fancy she is not at present being true to her best self.”
“I hope so,” said Frances. “I hope so indeed. I will tell you all,” and so she did.
It was not difficult, once she had begun. He drew from her with infinite tact, the tact born of true interest, the conflicting shades of feeling which were complicating the whole. For she was too essentially dutiful a daughter to throw any avoidable blame upon her father, yet too fair-minded not to allow that his extreme attitude—his mixing up of personal feeling and family prejudice where there was no need to have brought them in—was every day making conciliation more and more difficult.
“He will not hear of Betty’s going to India,” she said, “and has now reached the length of saying that under no circumstances would he sanction the engagement. And surely that is not fair or right? Eira declares,” she went on in a lighter tone, “that it is a case which would justify the two principals in running away.”
“I almost sympathise with her,” said Mr Morion, “still—that would be an extreme measure! If Horace were independent, I mean practically so—so placed that he could marry without imprudence, I should say, do so! and trust to time and her real good feeling to conquer his mother’s unreasonableness.”
“Ah, yes,” said Frances, “but you are forgetting papa: we could not risk it with him, and Betty would be miserable through her whole life if there were any coldness with her own people. You see, papa is so sore. It is not that he is ungenerous: he wouldn’t mind if Horace had nothing, if he could give her enough. But he has been brought up to feel sore about things, and he cannot throw it off.” For the moment she had really forgotten to whom she was speaking.
In one direction her companion was glad of this; it was what he had asked her to do. On the other hand—“Am I growing very selfish and grasping?” was the thought that went through his mind. “I should like to say, or at least to feel, that all this has come from the old disappointment—our great-grand-aunt’s failing to keep her promise, and to regret it as heartily as George Morion himself could do. But I cannot. There is a strange survival in me of the old family feeling as to this queer place. I would sacrifice a good deal rather than let it go from the old name.”