“Don’t try to deceive me,” said Cicely, with a smile of desperation. “I see you do not mean it. They did not say anything sincere. They were delighted to receive a new rector, a new neighbour, young and happy and well off——”
“Miss St. John——”
“Yes, I know; it is quite natural, quite right. I have nothing to say against it. Papa has only been here for twenty years, knowing all their troubles, doing things for them which he never would have done for himself; but—‘Le roi est mort; vive le roi!’” cried the impetuous girl in a flash of passion; in the strength of which she suddenly calmed down, and, smiling, turned to him again. “Is it not a pretty house? and Mrs. Ascott is very pretty too—has been, people say, but I think it is hard to say, has been. She is not young, but she has the beauty of her age.”
“I take very little interest in Mrs. Ascott,” said Mildmay, “seeing I never saw her till to-day; but I take a great deal of interest in what you were saying this morning.”
“You never saw any of us till yesterday, Mr. Mildmay.”
“I suppose that is quite true. I cannot help it—it is different. Miss St. John, I don’t know what you would think of the life I have been living, but yours has had a great effect upon me. What am I to do? you have unsettled me, you have confused my mind and all my intentions. Now tell me what to do.”
“I,” said Cicely aghast. “Oh, if I could only see a little in advance, if I could tell what to do myself!”
“You cannot slide out of it like this,” he said; “nay, pardon me, I don’t mean to be unkind; but what am I to do?”
Cicely looked at him with a rapid revulsion of feeling from indignation to friendliness. “Oh,” she cried, “can’t you fancy how a poor girl, so helpless as I am, is driven often to say a great deal more than she means? What can we do, we girls?—say out some of the things that choke us, that make our hearts bitter within us, and then be sorry for it afterwards? that is all we are good for. We cannot go and do things like you men, and we feel all the sharper, all the keener, because we cannot do. Mr. Mildmay, all that I said was quite true; but what does that matter? a thing may be wrong and false to every principle, and yet it cannot be helped. You ought not to have the living; papa ought to have it; but what then? No one will give it to papa, and if you don’t take it some one else will; therefore, take it, though it is wicked and a cruel wrong. It is not your fault, it is—I don’t know whose fault. One feels as if it were God’s fault sometimes,” cried Cicely; “but that must be wrong; the world is all wrong and unjust, and hard—hard; only sometimes there is somebody who is very kind, very good, who makes you feel that it is not God’s fault, and you forgive even the world.”
She put up her hand to wipe the tears from those young shining eyes, which indignation and wretchedness and tears only made the brighter. Cicely was thinking of the butcher—you will say no very elevated thought. But Mildmay, wondering, and touched to the heart, asked himself, with a suppressed throb of emotion, could she mean him?