“And if I have, Mr. Hardcastle?” said Sara. “I hope some books are true. I know what I mean, whether you know it or not. And so does Mr. Powys,” she added, suddenly meeting the stranger’s eye.
This appeal was unlucky, for it neutralized the amusement of the two elder gentlemen, and brought them back to their starting-point. It was a mistake in every way, for Powys, though he was looking on with interest and wonder, did not understand what Sara meant. He looked at her when she spoke, and reddened, and faltered something, and then betook himself to his plate with great assiduity, to hide his perplexity. He had never known any thing but the realities of life. He had known them in their most primitive shape, and he was beginning to become acquainted with them still more bitterly in the shape they take in the midst of civilization, when poverty has to contend with more than the primitive necessities. And to think of this dainty creature, whose very air that she breathed seemed different from that of his world, desiring to be brought face to face with such realities! He had been looking at her with great reverence, but now there mingled with his reverence just that shade of conscious superiority which a man likes to feel. He was not good, sweet, delightsome, celestial, as she was, but he knew better—precious distinction between the woman and the man.
But Sara, always thinking of him as so different from herself that she could use freedom with him, was not satisfied. “You understand me?” she said, repeating her appeal.
“No,” said young Powys; “at least if it is real poverty she speaks of, I don’t think Miss Brownlow can know what it means.” He turned to her father as he spoke with the instinct of natural good-breeding. And thereupon there occurred a curious change. The two gentlemen began to approve of the stranger. Sara, who up to this moment had been so gracious, approved of him no more.
“You are quite right,” said the Rector; “what Miss Brownlow is thinking of is an imaginary poverty which exists no longer—if it ever existed. If your father had ever been a poor curate, my dear Sara, like myself, for instance—”
“Oh, if you are all going to turn against me—” said Sara, with a little shrug of her shoulders. And she turned away as much as she could do it without rudeness from the side of the table at which young Powys sat, and began in revenge to talk society. “So Fanny is at Ridley,” she said; “what does she mean by always being at Ridley? The Keppels are very well, but they are not so charming as that comes to. Is there any one nice staying there just now?”
“Perhaps you and I should not agree about niceness,” said the Rector. “There are several people down for Easter. There is Sir Joseph Scrape, for instance, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer once, before you were born. I am very fond of him, but you would prefer his grandson, Sara, if he happened to have a grandson.”
“On the contrary, I like old gentlemen,” said Sara. “I never see any thing else, for one thing. There is yourself, Mr. Hardcastle, and papa—”
“Well, I suppose I am an old gentleman,” said the Rector, ruefully; “at least to babies like you. That is how things go in this world—one shifts the burden on to one’s neighbor. Probably Sir Joseph is of my mind, and thinks somebody else old. And then, in revenge, we have nothing to do but to call you young creatures babies, though you have the world in your hands,” Mr. Hardcastle added, with a sigh; for he was a vigorous man, and a widower, and had been already twice married, and saw no reason why he should not take that step again. And it was hard upon him to be called an old gentleman in this unabashed and open way.
“Well, they have the world before them,” said Mr. Brownlow; “but I am not so sure that they have it in their hands.”