"I do not think so. It was only a—momentary impatience," John said.
"Mr Erskine, I am going to ask you a great favour. It is if you would keep in Rintoul's company, keep by him; think, in a family how dreadful it would be if any quarrel sprang up. The visit will not last long. If you will keep your eye upon him, keep between him and temptation——"
John could not help smiling. The position into which he was being urged, as a sort of governor to Rintoul, was entirely absurd to his own consciousness. "You smile," cried Lady Lindores, eagerly; "you think what right has this woman to ask so much? I am not even a very old friend."
"I am laughing at the idea that Rintoul should be under my control; he is more a man of the world than I am."
"Yes," said his mother, doubtfully, "that is true. He is dreadfully worldly in some ways; but, Mr Erskine, I wonder if you will disapprove of me when I say it has been a comfort to me to find him quite boyish and impulsive in others? He is prudent—about Edith for example."
"About—Lady Edith?" John said, faltering, with a look of intense surprise and anxiety on his face.
There is no doubt that Lady Lindores was herself a most imprudent woman. She gave him a quick sudden glance, reddened, and then looked as suddenly at the other group: Millefleurs, flowing forth in placid talk, with much eloquent movement of his plump hands, and Edith listening, with a smile on her face which now and then seemed ready to overflow into laughter. She betrayed herself and all the family scheme by this glance,—so sudden, so unintentional,—the action of one entirely unskilled in the difficult art of deception. John's glance followed hers with a sudden shock and pang of dismay. He had not thought of it before; now in a moment he seemed to see it all. It was an unfortunate moment too; for Edith was slightly leaning forward, looking at her companion with a most amiable and friendly aspect, almost concealing, with the forward stoop of her pretty figure, the rotund absurdity of his. She smiled, yet she was listening to him with all the absorbed attention of a Desdemona; and the little brute had so much to say for himself! The blood all ran away from John's healthful countenance to replenish his heart, which had need of it in this sudden and most unlooked-for shock. Lady Lindores saw the whole, and shared the shock of the discovery, which to her was double, for she perceived in the same moment that she had betrayed herself, and saw what John's sentiments were. Some women divine such feelings from their earliest rise—foresee them, indeed, before they come into existence, and are prepared for the emergencies that must follow; but there are some who are always taken by surprise. She, too, became pale with horror and dismay. She ought to have foreseen it—she ought to have guarded against it; but before she had so much as anticipated such a danger, here it was!
"I mean," she faltered, "that she should—meet only the best people, go to the best houses—and that sort of thing; even that she should be perfectly dressed; he goes so far as that," she said, with an uneasy laugh.
John did not make any reply. He bowed his head slightly, that was all. He found himself, indeed, caught in such a whirlpool of strange emotion, that he could not trust his voice, nor even his thoughts, which were rushing head-long on each other's heels like horses broken loose, and were altogether beyond his control.
"But he is himself as impulsive as a boy," cried the unlucky mother, rushing into the original subject with no longer any very clear perception what it was; "and Mr Torrance's manner, you know, is sometimes—offensive to a sensitive person. He does not mean it," she added hurriedly; "people have such different degrees of perception."