‘Do you recollect a Miss Tracy there?’ said Ben, with a slight breathlessness,—the road was so steep; was that the cause?
‘Miss Tracy? Oh, you mean Millicent. What! do you know her?’ cried Mary, turning round upon him. He was taken by surprise, and perhaps his face betrayed him. At all events, she grew pale in a moment, poor child, and leaned her arm against one of the beech-trees. That was the moment at which she often thought the string of the bow twanged and the arrow came home.
‘I have met her,’ said Ben;—‘that is, I have seen a good deal of her; and she seemed to be fond of you.’
‘Millicent Tracy!’ repeated Mary, with a little tremulous movement. ‘Oh, I don’t think she was fond of me.’
‘You do not seem, at least, to have been fond of her,’ said Ben, with a little pique in his tone.
‘She was not in my set,’ said Mary, plucking up a little spirit. ‘We were younger. She was so pretty,—oh, so pretty! We all thought there never was any one like her. Is she as pretty now?’ Mary asked, with an attempt at interest; but her tone was not so eager and hearty as her words.
‘She is not pretty at all;—she is beautiful,’ said Ben, his passion betraying itself in spite of him. And then they stood silent, looking down on the river, and for some minutes not another word was said. It was Ben who was the first to speak. The man was angry, after the fashion of men, with the girl who up to this moment had been so sweetly ready to adopt what tone he pleased to give the conversation. ‘I seem to have been unfortunate in my subject,’ he said, turning abruptly to go in. ‘Miss Tracy, I see, cannot have been a favourite among the girls at Thornycroft. She was too beautiful, I suppose.’
‘Indeed, no,’ said Mary, with a little indignation, following him. ‘We were all very proud of her beauty. Though I don’t think we thought of beauty. We thought she was very pretty,—oh, so pretty! No girl at Thornycroft was ever so nice-looking; and nice too,’ she continued with a hesitating attempt to please him. ‘I always did think that she was nice, too.’
‘That was very good of you,’ Ben said, with a little scornful laugh; but Mary was silent again, and grew frightened, and felt as if her heart would break. What was Millicent Tracy to him? his cousin thought. If this was all he had come home for, only to ask about such a girl as that!—not for his mother at all, nor for Mary, nor for the sake of home. The idea so disturbed her temper and patience that she had some difficulty in keeping the ready tears from falling; and this, of course, was going a great deal too far, for it was not for the sole purpose of asking about Millicent that Ben had gone home.
From that moment a cloud fell over the shining day,—not in reality, for the sun shone as bright as ever,—but upon the cousins, as they climbed the winding path. All its exquisite greenness and intervals of sunshine and shade,—all the play of light and colour about, the silvery gleam of the river, the soft, full verdure behind,—were lost upon them. A jar had struck into the magical harmony of the summer air. Mary, after the first moment, recovering herself from that pang of mortification and disappointment, began to struggle with herself for something to say. What could she say? Millicent had not been popular at Thornycroft. She had turned the heads of the young masters, and being new to the delights of conquest, had encouraged them to make fools of themselves, and had scandalised the entire community. She had tempted the curate, who was the brother of Miss Thorny, the head of the establishment at Thornycroft, into a flirtation, and broken his heart; and in consequence of this feat had left the school abruptly. ‘Perhaps she was not so very much to blame,’ Mary said to herself as she went painfully along by Ben’s side, watching his averted face. ‘Men are such fools;’—unconsciously she repeated in her innocence that sentiment which was the fruit of Millicent’s experience;—‘they will do anything for beauty.’ Probably it was their own doing. Could it be Millicent’s fault if they went crazy about her lovely face? Thus the good girl reasoned herself into tolerance. She made a great many little feints to call Ben’s attention,—cleared her throat, dropped her gloves, tried what she could, by every innocent artifice which occurred to her, to get him to resume the interrupted conversation;—but Ben, with something of the brutality of a big brother mingling, as was inevitable, with his brotherly kindness, marched on and took no notice. She had to make a faltering beginning herself without any aid from him.