"I am not angry, if you would not speak such nonsense," Lilias cried.
"I will not speak nonsense, I will say nothing to displease you; but oh! Lilias, what will happen to me if you turn your back upon me?" said the girl.
She went away so humbly, with such deprecating looks, that Lilias not only felt her anger evaporate, but took herself severely to task for her sharpness with poor little Katie.
"After all, she is a whole year younger than me, whatever she says," Lilias said, sagely, to herself, "and a year makes a great difference at our age." Then her heart softened to Katie; if anything she could do would smooth over her poor little friend's troubles, what a hard-hearted girl she would be to deny it—"Me that does nothing for anybody, and everybody so good to me!" Lilias said in her heart. It began to seem to her a kind of duty to take upon her the task Katie proposed. If it did them good, it would do nobody harm. If Margaret got a fright and thought that she—she, Lilias Murray of Murkley—was going to fix her choice upon Philip Stormont, it would serve Margaret right for entertaining such an unworthy idea. "Me!" Lilias cried, with a smile of profound disdain. But for Katie it was all very well. For Katie it was entirely unobjectionable. Philip was just the right person for her, and she for him. Lilias made as short work of any romantic pretensions which the Stormonts might put forth as her sister could have done. What were they, to set up for being superior to the minister's daughter? The Setons were well born, for anything Lilias knew to the contrary, and the others were but small lairds, not great persons. Perhaps Mrs. Stormont's favourite claim upon her as one who might have been her mother had irritated the temper of the daughter of Lady Lilias Murray. She had a scorn of the pretensions of the smaller family. Katie was "just as good," she declared to herself. All this process of thought was going on while Lilias went through the various processes of her toilet. When she went into the book-room, which was sacred to her studies, and found Katie there, she gave her little friend a condescending kiss, though she did not say much. And Katie, who was very quick-witted, understood. She did not tease her benefactress with questions. She was ready to accept her protection without forcing it into words.
And no doubt, in the days that followed, Margaret and Jean were much perplexed, it might even be said distressed. Philip Stormont began to pay them visits with a wearisome pertinacity. When he came he had not much to say; he informed them about the weather, that it was a fine day or a bad day, that the glass was falling, that the dew had been heavy last night, with many other very interesting scraps of information. But, when he had exhausted this subject, he fell to sucking the top of his cane. He was very attentive when anyone else spoke, especially Miss Margaret, and he looked at Lilias, perhaps as Katie had instructed him to look, with a gaze which indeed was more like anxiety than anything else, but which might do duty as admiration and interest with those who did not know the difference. To the outside spectator, who knew nothing about the conspiracy entered into by these young people, it would indeed have appeared very evident that Philip had been converted to his mother's opinion by the apparition of Lilias at the ball. And indeed the beauty of Lilias, like her position, was so much superior to that of Katie that nobody could have been surprised at the young man's change of opinion.
It might have been thought very natural too, that, after his early flirtations with the minister's daughter, whose mother brought her far too much forward, his fancy should have turned legitimately in a higher direction as his taste improved. Mrs. Stormont heard of her son's proceedings with the liveliest delight, giving God thanks indeed, poor lady, in her deceived heart that He had turned her boy's thoughts in the right direction, and given her this comfort when she needed it most. And she also applauded somewhat her own cleverness in having seen the right means for so desirable an end, and secured the début of Lilias at Philip's ball, an event which connected their names, and no doubt would make them feel themselves more or less bound to each other. Mrs. Stormont felt that little Katie was routed horse and foot, and also that poor Mrs. Seton, whom she considered a designing woman and manœuvring mother (entirely oblivious of her own gifts of that kind), was discomfited and thrown out, a thought almost as sweet to her mind as that of Philip's deliverance. And it would be wrong to say that Mrs. Seton herself did not feel a certain sense of defeat. When she met Philip going up the village towards the castle, the smile and banter with which she greeted him were bitter-sweet.
"I am really glad to see that you are finding some entertainment at Murkley," she would say. "I have so often been sorry for you with nothing to occupy you. Yes, yes, whatever women may think, a young man wants something to amuse him; and the ladies at the castle are most entertaining. Miss Margaret has just an uncommon judgment, and dear Miss Jean, we are all fond of her; and as for Lilias, that speaks for itself. Yes, yes, Mr. Philip, with a face like that, there is nothing more to say."
Philip listened to all this with wonderful composure. He secretly chuckled now and then at the ease with which everybody was taken in. "Even her own mother," he said to himself, with the greatest admiration of his Katie. Deception looks like a high-art to the simple intelligence when it is exercised to his own advantage, and even the highest moralist winks at the artifices with which a couple of young people contrive to conceal their courtship. It is supposed that the supreme necessity of the end to be obtained justifies such means: at least that would seem to be the original cause of such a universal condonation of offence.
Miss Margaret did not share Mrs. Stormont's sentiments. She had always been afraid of this long-leggit lad. He was just the kind of well-grown, well-looking production of creation that might take a young girl's eye, she felt, before she had seen anything better: and she blamed herself as much for permitting the ball as Philip's mother applauded herself for contriving it. Margaret was very far from happy at this period. The more Philip talked about the weather, and the more minute were the observations he made about the glass rising, or the dew falling, the more she looked at him, with a growing consternation, wondering if it were possible that Lilias could be attracted by such qualities as he exhibited.
"He is just a gomeril," she said, indignantly.