‘But would not that be like your aunt’s interference over again, with no right at all,’ Susie said.
‘No one can have any right—save what is given them by the clergy. And you are not my aunt—very different! How I should love to delegate as much as is fit of my authority to you!’ He paused a moment, with a sigh and tender look, at which Susie secretly laughed, but outwardly took no notice. Then he added: ‘Aunt Mary would have no delegation. She interferes as if she thought she had a right to do it—a pretension not tenable for a moment. But to entrust the woman’s part—to find an Ancilla Domini, dear Miss Sandford, in you!’
Mr. Cattley was not so lively as this. He would sit for a long time by the little work-table which had belonged to old Mrs. Sandford, and say very little. He would sometimes relate to Susie something about her grandparents, and talk of the pretty old lady with her white hands.
‘They were here when I first came,’ he would say. ‘I was a little lonely when I came. I was one of the youngest of an immense family. My people were glad to get rid of us, I think, especially the young ones, who were of no great account. And my mother was dead. Edgeley was very pleasant to me. I was taken up at the rectory as if I had been a son of the house. And nobody can tell what she—what they all—were to me.’
Mr. Cattley coughed a little over the she, to make it look as if it were a mistake, changing it into they.
‘Mrs. Egerton,’ said Susie, with a directness which brought a little colour to the old curate’s cheek, ‘must have been very pretty then.’
‘To me she is beautiful now,’ he said, fervently, ‘and always will be. I am not of the opinion that age has anything to do with beauty. It becomes a different kind. It is not a girl’s or a young woman’s beauty any longer, but it is just as beautiful. You will forgive me, Miss Sandford——’
‘I have nothing to forgive,’ said Susie, but she said it with a little heat. ‘I like people to be faithful,’ she added, perhaps indiscreetly.
Mr. Cattley did not answer for some time. And then he said:
‘I am going away now, and another life is beginning. I have been rather a dreamer all my life, but I must be so no longer. I begin to feel the difference. I think, if you will not be offended, that it is partly you who have taught me——’