“Well, yes, I fancy so. He was very rude to me once, at all events, and naturally that didn’t add to the attractions of Craig-Morion, for these people live almost on my own ground. But really,” he went on frankly, “there are no reasons for my avoidance of the place, except negative ones. I get into grooves, I fear, and feel lazy about things that I have not always done.”
There was silence for a moment or two, then Miss Littlewood spoke again.
“Horace has interested me in those relations of yours,” she said, “from what he has told me of them. Let me see, cousins, are they not? But not at all near? Or is the father a sort of great-uncle to you?”
“Oh, dear, no,” replied Mr Morion, speaking more briskly than he had yet done. “The father is actually of my own generation, though old enough almost to be my father. I have never counted the cousinship—it must be of the third or fourth degree by this time—in fact, as I said before, I have had little or nothing to do with them.”
Madeleine did not reply. A certain occult suspicion of unexpressed disapproval in her mind made itself felt by her companion. He glanced at her rapidly.
“They are very poor, from what Horace says,” she remarked.
“Are they?” Mr Morion answered indifferently. “I really can’t say. I don’t suppose they are rich, but there is no son, and little girls are easily educated.”
“Little girls!” repeated Madeleine, with a slight laugh. “Why, you are ignorant about them. The eldest certainly, if not the middle one, is as old as I, four or five and twenty.”
“Really?” he said, in the same tone. “I thought their father married late in life, and I am getting to an age when youth at any stage seems some distance from me. Poor girls! their life must be dull enough up there with that old bear. You may be able to show them some kindness, Madeleine. I know you are one of those people whose benevolence is somewhat abnormally developed.”
“I should like to be kind to them,” she said, simply, and Mr Morion believed her and admired her, as he often did. But yet something in her very downrightness had a slightly irritant effect upon him, and of this in return Madeleine was not unconscious.