Her thoughts went back to the sun-smitten trunk of the leafless tree, and Edward leaning against it, looking miserable and trying to smooth her fall by the unveracities with which she herself had now awkwardly saddled his eminently veracious wife.
“Edward? H’m!”
Something in the accent laid by Lady Bletchley on her brother’s name alarmed Miss Ransome. “Oh, why did I put her on that tack? She is wondering whether he was tarred with the same brush as old Tom. What possessed me to mention his name?”
“Edward!” repeated Felicity a second time and thoughtfully. “So he had an opinion about it too!”
“It was exactly the same as Mrs. Tancred’s.”
“He would have kept it to himself if it had not been,” replied Felicity, with a slightly sarcastic laugh. “Well, tell me all about it. How did you like Edward?”
“I thought him perfectly charming; he reminded me so much of you.”
The comparison instituted was meant by Miss Ransome as a compliment of the highest order, but in most human breasts there lie depths of self-esteem only accidentally hit upon by their acquaintances; and the tone in which Edward’s sister repeated “Of me!” adding, with a heightened colour, “Well, at all events, I always know my own mind,” showed that once again Bonnybell had mistaken the finger-posts of her road. She hastened to qualify her statement.
“Of course, your characters are not alike, but I noticed little turns of expression that brought you back to me. I was so glad of anything which did that.”
This adroit and touching exegesis merited and received a caress, and a fresh start was happily made.