“What is the matter, Miss Dolly?” Sir Gus had said.
“Oh, nothing. I was not crying,” Dolly said, with a sob. “I am too indignant to cry. It is the horridness of people,” she cried with an outburst of wrath and grief. Sir Gus was distressed. He did not like to see any one cry, much less this dainty little creature, who was almost his first acquaintance in the place.
“Don’t,” he said, touching her shoulder lightly with his brown hand. “Whatever it is it cannot be worth crying about. None of them can do any harm to you.”
“Harm to me! I wish they could,” said Dolly; “that would not matter much. But don’t believe them, don’t you believe them: a little while ago they were all for Paul—nobody was so nice as Paul—and now it is all you, and Paul, they say, is nowhere. Do you think it is like a lady to say that poor Paul is ‘nowhere,’ only because he has lost his property, and you have got it?” cried Dolly, turning with fury, which it was difficult to restrain, upon the poor little baronet. He changed colour: of course he knew that it was his position, and not any special gifts of his own, which recommended him; yet he did not like the thought.
“That is not my fault, Miss Dolly,” he said. “You should not be unjust; though it is your favourite who has been the loser, you ought not to be unjust, for I have nothing more than what is my right.”
“Oh, Sir Augustus,” said Dolly, alarmed by her own vehemence, “it was not you I meant. You have always been kind. It was those horrid people who think of nothing but who has the money. And then, you know,” she said, turning her tearful eyes upon him, “I have known them all my life—and I can’t bear to hear them speak so of Paul.”
“And you can’t bear me, I suppose, for putting this Paul of yours out of his place?” Gus said.
“No, indeed I don’t blame you. A woman might have given it up, but it is not your fault if you are different from a woman—all men are,” said Dolly, shaking her head. “When one knows as much about a village as I do, one soon finds out that.”
“I suppose you think the women are better than the men,” said Sir Gus, shaking his head too.
“I am for my own side,” said Dolly promptly, her tears drying up in the impulse of war; “but I did not mean that,” she added, “only different. Men and women are not good—or nasty—in the same way. I don’t suppose—you—could have done anything but what you did.”