She dropped her eyelids just a little, and spread one palm above them, as if the dance of pleasure in her eyes required veiling; and then she finished her sentence. "It is a lovely place, I hear. How nice it will be, to be there! How much you will enjoy yourself!"
"You are quite wrong there," replied Stocks and Stones. "I expect to have a most wretched time. What do I care for the Stones of Venice? I am not going to please my very miserable self. You know why I am going, Miss Cranleigh."
"Mr. Stoneman! How should I know? I have not the very smallest idea!" Oh, what a dreadful story, Grace! And did you make it better or worse, by a blush, and quick palpitation of the guilty breast that harboured it?
"Then I am going for this cause. There is somebody in this country who has got me entirely underfoot, and tramples on me every day. There is no cure for it, but to run away. I have no spirit left. My eyes are always on the ground."
"Indeed! Well, I have not perceived that. But if you have no will of your own, what else is there for you to do? But it seems so un-English to run away. You are not weak, Mr. Stoneman. My brother says that you are very strong. And he would be only too glad to help you. He is too fond of what the reporters love to describe as personal violence."
"If it were a man, I might have some hope, even without such a champion. But when the tyrant is a lady, and the most perfect of her sex, one against whom it is impossible to rebel——"
"This does you the very highest credit. And it is so unusual. A great friend of mine, and such a sweet girl, quite adores her stepmother. But men—though I know so little of them—but I fancied that they were apt to feel a kind—a kind of prejudice. Narrow, no doubt, but violent."
"It is worse than fifty stepmothers. My step is a quiet, sweet-tempered woman; and I wish that I saw more of her; but she seems to prefer her own relatives. Now, as if you did not know what I mean! What did I tell you the other day?"
"A variety of things. And what did I tell you? And didn't you say very clearly that you liked me all the better for my objections?"
"No, no. Come, that is a twist! I said that I respected your objections, but thought them extremely romantic, and would live in the hope of your trying to get over them. May I sit upon this tub, and reason with you? Oh, how I wish I was a dairyman!"