“That is a flesh-coloured variety,” said Mrs. Swancourt. “But oleanders, though they are such bulky shrubs, are so very easily wounded as to be unprunable—giants with the sensitiveness of young ladies. Oh, here is Elfride!”
Elfride looked as guilty and crestfallen as Lady Teazle at the dropping of the screen. Mrs. Swancourt presented him half comically, and Knight in a minute or two placed himself beside the young lady.
A complexity of instincts checked Elfride’s conventional smiles of complaisance and hospitality; and, to make her still less comfortable, Mrs. Swancourt immediately afterwards left them together to seek her husband. Mr. Knight, however, did not seem at all incommoded by his feelings, and he said with light easefulness:
“So, Miss Swancourt, I have met you at last. You escaped me by a few minutes only when we were in London.”
“Yes. I found that you had seen Mrs. Swancourt.”
“And now reviewer and reviewed are face to face,” he added unconcernedly.
“Yes: though the fact of your being a relation of Mrs. Swancourt’s takes off the edge of it. It was strange that you should be one of her family all the time.” Elfride began to recover herself now, and to look into Knight’s face. “I was merely anxious to let you know my REAL meaning in writing the book—extremely anxious.”
“I can quite understand the wish; and I was gratified that my remarks should have reached home. They very seldom do, I am afraid.”
Elfride drew herself in. Here he was, sticking to his opinions as firmly as if friendship and politeness did not in the least require an immediate renunciation of them.
“You made me very uneasy and sorry by writing such things!” she murmured, suddenly dropping the mere cacueterie of a fashionable first introduction, and speaking with some of the dudgeon of a child towards a severe schoolmaster.