‘I hope he will go,’ said Madge thoughtfully; adding, after a pause: ‘We must try to persuade him, aunt.’
‘Why are you so anxious about this, child? I never knew you to be very eager to go to Ringsford yourself.’
‘Because I am about to disappoint Mr Hadleigh in a matter which he considers of great importance.’
Then she read the strange letter she had received from him, and Dame Crawshay was surprised almost as much as Madge herself by the earnestness of the appeal it contained. She was silent for several minutes, evidently occupied by some serious reflections. At length:
‘Thou knowest how I love the lad; but that does not blind me to his faults—nay, it need not startle thee to hear me say he has faults: we all have our share of them. Perhaps it is lucky for thee that what seems to me Philip’s worst fault is that he has the impulsive way his father speaks about.’
‘But all his impulses are good-natured ones.’
‘I do not doubt it; but that makes it the more needful he should have some experience of the world’s ways before tying himself and you down to a hard-and-fast line. Nothing but experience will ever teach us that the hard-and-fast line of life is the easiest in the end. There’s a heap of truth in what Mr Hadleigh says about Philip, though he doesn’t seem to me to have found the surest way of keeping him right.’
‘What would you advise, then?’ was the eager question.
‘Thou must settle this matter for thyself, Madge; but I will tell thee that there is one thing Mr Hadleigh is quite wrong about.’
‘What is that?’