For his thoughts,
Would they were blank sooner than filled with me!
Maud did not exactly get a scolding, but Felicia looked extremely grave. Maud's high spirits were gone in an instant; the excitement which had enabled her to defy propriety hitherto deserted her at the door; the recklessness with which Desvœux always infected her had driven away with him in his mail-phaeton, and left her merely with the disagreeable consciousness of having acted foolishly and wrongly. Felicia knew exactly how matters stood and scarcely said a word. Her silence however was, Maud felt, the bitterest reproach.
'Scold me, scold me, dear,' she cried, the tears starting to her eyes; 'only don't look like that and say nothing!'
'Well,' said Felicia, 'first promise me never again to drive alone with Mr. Desvœux.'
'After all,' suggested Maud, 'it is a mere matter of appearances, and what do they signify?'
'Some matters of appearance,' said Felicia, 'signify very much. Besides, this is something more than that. It is bad enough for you to be seen with him—what I really care about is your being with him at all.'
'But,' said Maud, 'he is really very nice: he amuses me so much!'
'Yes,' answered the other, 'he amuses one, but then it always hurts. His fun has a something, I don't know what it is, but which is only just not offensive; and I don't trust him a bit.'
'But,' Maud argued, 'he is great friends with George, is he not?'
'Not great friends,' said Felicia; 'they were at college together, and have worked in the same office for years, and are intimate like schoolboys, and George never says an unkind word of any one; but I do not call them friends at all.'