“Oh! Lady Brotherton, my heart is breaking! It is not even that. It is that I have got a secret, and you will not be pleased.”
They were sheltering in Sir John’s deck cabin from the heat of the sun, the steamboat ploughing peacefully on its further way to Marseilles, the journey approaching its last stage, and the time of separation drawing near. Lydia’s eyes were full of tears; she covered her face with her hand; the other was clasped in that of the kind friend whom she felt she had betrayed.
“A secret—how can you have a secret? You have never been away from my side. I suppose it must be something about love, Liddy—that is the only secret at your age. And why should I not be pleased—unless you have made an unworthy choice?”
“Oh, no, not that—too good—too good.”
“Lionel, go away; we don’t want you just now. Liddy has something to tell me.”
“It is better that I should tell you for her, mother. She will not let the secret be kept a day. I wanted to put off till—we parted: in case you should be, as she thinks, displeased: though I can’t believe you will be displeased.”
“Lionel!” Of course, from the time he had begun to speak Lady Brotherton had perceived but too well what the secret was. She loosed her hold of Lydia’s hand, which lay white and passive in her lap after she had withdrawn hers, with a kind of appeal in it. Lady Brotherton’s colour went and came. Hard words came to her lips; but she looked at her son’s face and paused. “I am displeased, more than displeased; and your father will never consent to it,” she said.
Lydia did not say a word, but she sighed and took her hand away, to clasp it with the other in that pathetic gesture, “the trick of grief,” which she had learned from her mother. As for Lionel, an only son and spoilt child, he took matters with a high hand.
“My father will consent gladly enough if you consent, mother,” he said; “and what did you expect? You have thrown us together constantly for five months. You must think me a wretched creature if you thought I could not manage to persuade her to like me—a little, with all the opportunities we have had.”
“It is not that,” said Lady Brotherton, with simplicity, falling into the snare, “any girl might like you; of course there is nothing wonderful in that.”