“Don’t say a word,” said the lawyer, with a wave of his hand. “It was all excellent, and I’m glad to see you’ve such a good cook. You don’t know what a comfort it is to come out of a confused house like that, with lengthy fine dinners that nobody understands, to a comfortable chop which a man can enjoy and which it is a pleasure to see.”
“Bedloe was not a confused house in former days,” said Langton, with a feeling that Winifred’s credit was somehow assailed.
“Ah, nothing is as it was in former days,” said Mr. Babington, shaking his head; “everything is topsy-turvy now. I suppose you know all about the last turn the affair has taken. I wonder you were not there, though, to support poor Miss Winifred, poor thing, who has had a great deal to go through.”
“You will be surprised,” said Langton, forcing a somewhat pale smile, “if I tell you that I don’t know anything about it. Miss Chester preferred that the question between her brothers and herself should be settled among themselves. And perhaps she was right.”
“My dear Langton,” said Mr. Babington, laying his hand on the young man’s arm, “I hope there’s no coolness on this account between that poor girl and you?”
“I see no reason why she should be called a poor girl,” Langton said quickly.
“Ah, well, you have not seen her then during the last two or three days. Poor thing! between making the best of these fellows, and struggling to keep up a show of following her father’s directions—between acting false and meaning true”—
“Mr. Babington,” said Langton, with a dryness in his throat, “unhappily, as you say, there has been—no coolness, thank Heaven—but a little—a momentary silence between Miss Chester and me. Perhaps I have been to blame. I thought she—Tell me what has happened, and how everything is settled, for pity’s sake!”
“Yes,” said the old lawyer, “I haven’t the slightest doubt, my young friend, that you have been to blame. That is why the poor child looked so white and pathetic when she said to me that she had no one to consult. When you come to have girls of your own,” Mr. Babington said somewhat severely, “you’ll know how it feels to see a little young creature you are fond of look like that.”
Heaven and earth! as if all the old fogeys in the world, if they had a thousand daughters, could feel half what a young lover feels! The blood rose to young Langton’s temples, but he did not trust himself to reply.