St. Clair grew red too with surprise and mortification; what could the girl mean? he asked himself; but he answered suavely, “I am sure you are a great deal better and kinder than most girls—or men either, Miss Trevor. You have the divine gift of sympathy, which always does one good.”
“I don’t know if it is sympathy, Mr. St. Clair. Papa left me a great many directions. He said there were some things I was to try to do; and if it would be good for you to have leisure, and be able to rest for a year or two—”
St. Clair was reduced to the level of Raymond Rushton by the utter confusion which these words seemed to bring into the very atmosphere.
“Oh, by Jove!” he ejaculated faintly, in his dismay. He rose up hurriedly. She would offer him money, he felt, if he gave her another moment to do it, and though he was very willing and desirous, if he could, to get possession of her money as a whole, to have a little of it thus offered to him seemed the last indignity. “I expect to find Jock a very amusing pupil,” he said; “not at all like the average little boy. He shall give me a lesson in literature when I have given him his Latin. I suspect it is I who will profit the most. The little wretch seems to have read everything; I wonder if you have shared his studies. He must have got the taste from some one; it is not generally innate in small boys.”
“Oh, no,” said Lucy, “not I.” She was disappointed to have the subject changed so rapidly, and abandoned it with great reluctance, still looking at him to know why he should so cut her short. “Jock does not think much of me,” she added, “and all those story-books and plays and poetry can not be good for him surely. Papa never minded; he was old, and Jock seemed such a baby it did not seem to matter what he did; it was not his fault.”
“Oh, I don’t think it was anybody’s fault. But you are reading, I see, in a steadier way. What is it? history?” Mr. St. Clair approached her table where she was sitting and looked at Lucy’s book.
“Yes,” she said, with a soft little sigh. “Lady Randolph thought I ought; and I should be thinking of my French. It is so hard when one is not clever. I must ask Mr. Stone to let me go to mademoiselle when she comes back.”
“And may I help you with this?” Mr. St. Clair said. He drew a chair near her and sat down.
It had not occurred to good Mrs. Ford that any precautions were necessary, or that she should break up her mornings by being present during all the talk of the young people. If a girl had to be watched forever, Mrs. Ford thought, she must be a very poor sort of girl; so that Lucy’s pink drawing-room was practically open to the world; as entirely open as if she had been an American young lady, with a salon and visiting list of her own. She was very grateful to Mr. St. Clair when he sat down beside her. It was so kind. He took up the book, and asked her if she had seen this and that, other books more readable than the dry compendium Lucy was studying.
“If you will let me get them for you it will give me the greatest pleasure,” St. Clair said. “I consider history my great subject. I should like to help you, if you will let me.” Lucy accepted his offer with the greatest gratitude. She had found it very dry work by herself.