“Yes,” said Mr. Brownlow, shaping his face a little, unawares, into the right look. The rector had had two mothers for Fanny, and was used to this kind of thing; indeed it was never off the cards, as Fanny herself was profoundly aware, that there might be a third; and accordingly he had a right to be effusive about it: whereas Mr. Brownlow had had but one love in his life, and could not talk on the subject. But he knew his duty sufficiently to look solemn, and assent to his pastor’s proposition about the motherless girls.
“On that account, if on no other, we ought to give them our double attention,” the rector continued. “You know I can have but one motive. Take my word for it, it is not fit that your clerk should be brought into your daughter’s society. If any foolish complication should come of it, you would never forgive yourself; and only think of the harm it would do Sara in the world.”
“Softly, Hardcastle,” said Mr. Brownlow, “don’t go too far. Sara and the world have nothing to do with each other. That sort of thing may answer well enough for your hackneyed girls who have gone through a few seasons and are up to every thing; but to the innocent—”
“My dear Brownlow,” said the rector, with a certain tone of patronage and compassion, “I know how much I am inferior to you in true knowledge of the world; but perhaps—let us say—the world of fashion—may be a little better known to me than to you.”
Mr. Brownlow was roused by this. “I don’t know how it should be so,” he said, looking very steadily at the rector. Mr. Hardcastle had a second cousin who was an Irish peer. That was the chief ground of his social pretensions, and the world of fashion, to tell the truth, had never fallen much in his way; but still a man who has a cousin a lord, when he claims superior knowledge of society to that possessed by another man who has no such distinction, generally, in the country at least, has his claim allowed.
“You think not?” he said, stammering and growing red. “Oh, ah—well—of course—in that case I can’t be of any use. I am sorry to have thrust my opinion on you. If you feel yourself so thoroughly qualified—”
“Don’t take offense,” said Mr. Brownlow. “I have no such high opinion of my qualifications. I don’t think we are, either of us, men of fashion to speak of, but, as it happens, I know my own business. It suits me to have my clerk at hand—and he is not just an ordinary clerk; and I hope Sara is not the sort of girl to lose her head and go off into silly romances. I have confidence in her, you see, as you have in Fanny—though perhaps it may not be so perfectly justified,” Mr. Brownlow added, with a smile. Fanny was known within her own circle to be a very prudent little woman, almost too prudent, and this was a point which the rector always felt.
“Well, I hope you will find it has been for the best,” Mr. Hardcastle answered, and he sighed in reply to his friend’s smile: evidently he did not expect it would turn out for the best—but at all events he had delivered his soul.
And Fanny, in the mean time, was delivering her little lecture to Sara. They had been dining at Brownlows, and there were no other guests, and the two girls were alone in the drawing-room, in that little half-hour which the gentlemen spent over their temperate glass of claret. It is an hour much bemoaned by fast young women, but, as the silent majority are aware, it is not an unpleasant hour. Fanny Hardcastle and Sara Brownlow were great friends in their way. They were in the habit of seeing each other continually, of going to the same places, of meeting the same people. It was not exactly a friendship of natural affinity, but rather of proximity, which answers very well in many cases. Probably Fanny, for her part, was not capable of any thing more enthusiastic. They told each other every thing—that is, they each told the other as much as that other could understand. Fanny, by instinct, refrained from putting before Sara all the prudences and sensible restrictions that existed in her own thoughts; and Sara, equally by instinct, was dumb about her own personal feelings and fancies, except now and then when carried away by their vehemence. “She would not understand me, you know,” both of them would have said. But to-night Fanny had taken upon herself the prophetic office. She, too, had her burden of warning to deliver, and to free her own soul from all responsibility in her neighbor’s fate.
“Sara,” she said, “I saw you the other day when you did not see me. You were in the park—down there, look, under that tree; and that Mr. Powys was with you. You know I once saw him here.”