“Hilary, I wish I did. That is the very thing that takes such a long time to find out.”
“Now, did I treat you in such a spirit? Did I look at you, and think,‘here is a rogue I must find out’?”
“No, of course you never did. That is not in your nature. At the same time, perhaps, it might not matter so long to you, as it must to me.”
She met his glad eyes with a look so wistful, yet of such innocent trust (to assuage the harm of words), that Hilary might be well excused for keeping the Grower’s supper waiting, as he did that evening.
CHAPTER XIX.
FOUR YOUNG LADIES.
The excellent people of Coombe Lorraine as yet were in happy ignorance of all these fine doings on Hilary’s part. Sir Roland knew only too well, of course, that his son and heir was of a highly romantic, chivalrous, and adventurous turn. At Eton and Oxford many little scrapes (which seemed terrible at the time) showed that he was sure to do his best to get into grand scrapes, as the landscape of his youthful world enlarged.
“Happen what will, I can always trust my boy to be a gentleman,” his father used to say to himself, and to his only real counsellor, old Sir Remnant Chapman. Sir Remnant always shook his head; and then (for fear of having meant too much) said, “Ah, that is the one thing after all. People begin to talk a great deal too much about Christianity.”
At any rate, the last thing they thought of was the most likely thing of all—that Hilary should fall in love with a good, and sweet, and simple girl, who, for his own sake, would love him, and grow to him with all the growth of love. “Morality”—whereby we mean now, truth, and right, and purity—was then despised in public, even more than now in private life. Sir Remnant thought it a question of shillings, how many maids his son led astray; and he pitied Sir Roland for having a son so much handsomer than his own.