'I am afraid Mrs Chichester is right after all, in considering you to be a little hard, Miss Haddon.'
'Afraid Mrs Chichester is right! I have a great mind to tell her!' I ejaculated, rising.
'Have a greater mind, and don't,' he smilingly returned.
'But it might be good for you to go into training a little as well as the rest of us; and Mrs Chichester might not object to undertake'——
'Could not you try what you could do towards bringing me into a better frame of mind?' he said. 'It would be like an acknowledgment of weakness to hand me over to Mrs Chichester, you know. You might at anyrate try what could be done for me before acknowledging yourself unequal to the task, in that faint-hearted way.'
'In other words, you want me to stay and talk Lilian to you,' was my mental comment, as I shook my head and moved away.
As I have said, I liked Robert Wentworth better than any other gentleman who came to Fairview. Arthur Trafford occasionally brought a friend with him down to dinner; but his friends were not of the pattern which pleased me—men who looked, and spoke, and moved as though they were only playing the part of supernumeraries on the stage of life. With Robert Wentworth there was all the pleasure of feeling that I was thoroughly understood. I was indeed able to unfold my thoughts to him, as I could not even to Lilian, love her as I did. She was a girl, and I a woman, and she deferred to me as to an elder sister; constantly, though unconsciously, reminding me of the eleven years' difference between our ages.
Robert Wentworth and I met on equal terms. With him I neither gave nor obtained quarter; and our encounters were as refreshing as a tonic to my mental health. Whatever the subject broached, we freely shewed each other our thoughts about it; and I learned to give and take a blow with perfect good-humour. I was sometimes not a little startled to find how completely he was beginning to track out certain tendencies, which I had hitherto flattered myself were so safely packed away out of sight as to be unknown to those with whom I associated. More than once the common-sense which he bantered me about setting too high a value upon, was blinded, and I was led on by wily steps into the enchanted regions of romance, and penetrated by their subtle influence, gave words to my thoughts before I recollected and was on guard again. But no word or look of Robert Wentworth's wounded my amour propre at such times; my little flights of fancy met with the gravest respect. In truth, he was a great deal more tolerant to what he termed my romance, than to any little slip in my reasoning; because he had the candour to tell me my ideality was getting starved for want of nourishment, and needed a little encouragement, whilst my reasoning powers required an occasional snubbing. 'And as to pretending you have no romance—you are the most romantic young lady I know. Don't protest; it would not be the least use; though I will not expose you to the world—not even to Lilian.'
I only knew that he was gradually teaching me to be less ashamed of such things than I had latterly been, and so rendering me less morbid, and more fit to be Philip's wife. Philip should thank him for that as well as other things, by-and-by. The hope that Philip and he would be friends, and that there would be pleasant communion between us three in the future, was very cheering to me. How complete would have been the picture could I have imagined Lilian in it as the wife of Robert Wentworth—what a delightful quartet!