“Miss Heriot, I agree with enthusiasm that I am at your service, always and everywhere.”
“Pray, pray, Mr. Fanshawe! don’t make me feel more ridiculous than I do already. Let us talk of other things.”
“Why should not we talk of the one that interests you most—of that you sent for me about?”
“Because, simply, it does not interest you,” said Marjory, looking at him with a smile—that steady, forcibly kept-up smile of incipient quarrel which is so far from agreeable to encounter.
Poor Fanshawe was in despair. He ought to have been pleased, on the contrary, had he had his wits about him; for such quarrels never arise between indifferent persons. He started up from his chair, and made a rapid course round the room, and seized upon the brief notes of address and reference which Agnes had left.
“I will go away, then, and execute your commission,” he said, in an altered voice; “since that is all you wanted me for. It is too good for me, I allow, that you should employ me at all, and for that I am grateful. But I think you are a little hard upon me,” he went on. “You make no allowance for the feeling I have in seeing you drawn into such a connection; placed in the position of sister to a girl who—and brought into constant contact with this sister. I have that to get over before I can approach the subject dispassionately. You do not know what sort of people such women are.”
“Do you?”
“God forgive me, Miss Heriot—I have been as other men!” he said, reddening like a girl. “No, by Heaven! I don’t know, except by report and common acceptation; not much—”
“I do,” said Marjory, calmly; “I know these two women, and I know the class from which they spring; but that is not the question. I have formed my opinion strongly on the subject. I do not ask you to make it yours.”
“It is mine, with all my heart—anything you believe,” said Fanshawe, very wretched, and yet once more with that glimmering of fun which spoilt the pathos of so many a fine situation. Marjory, at this moment, was not inclined to see any humour in it. She went on severely, and with a tremendous courtesy which shrivelled him up.