Erema; Or, My Father's Sin

by R. D. Blackmore

I never received him with worse grace, often as I had repulsed him; but he was one of those people who think that women are all whims and ways.

“I grieve to intrude upon large ideas,” he said, as I rose and looked at him, “but I act under positive orders now. A lady knows what is best for a lady. Mrs. Hockin has been looking from the window, and she thinks that you ought not to be sitting in the sun like this. There has been a case of sun-stroke at Southbourne—a young lady meditating under the cliff—and she begs you to accept this palm leaf.”

I thought of the many miles I had wandered under the fierce Californian sun; but I would not speak to him of that. “Thank you,” I said; “it was very kind of her to think of it, and of you to do it. But will it be safe for you to go back without it?”

“Oh, why should I do so?” he answered, with a tone of mock pathos which provoked me always, though I never could believe it to be meant in ridicule of me, for that would have been too low a thing; and, besides, I never spoke so. “Could you bear to see me slain by the shafts of the sun? Miss Castlewood, this parasol is amply large for both of us.”

I would not answer him in his own vein, because I never liked his vein at all; though I was not so entirely possessed as to want every body to be like myself.

“Thank you; I mean to stay here,” I said; “you may either leave the parasol or take it, whichever will be less troublesome. At any rate, I shall not use it.”

A gentleman, according to my ideas, would have bowed and gone upon his way; but Sir Montague Hockin would have no rebuff. He seemed to look upon me as a child, such as average English girls, fresh from little schools, would be. Nothing more annoyed me, after all my thoughts and dream of some power in myself, than this.

“Perhaps I might tell you a thing or two,” he said, while I kept gazing at some fishing-boats, and sat down again, as a sign for him to go—“a little thing or two of which you have no idea, even in your most lonely musings, which might have a very deep interest for you. Do you think that I came to this hole to see the sea? Or that fussy old muff of a Major's doings?”

“Perhaps you would like me to tell him your opinion of his intellect and great plans,” I answered. “And after all his kindness to you!”

“You never will do that,” he said; “because you are a lady, and will not repeat what is said in confidence. I could help you materially in your great object, if you would only make a friend of me.”