He carried it to the sailor, who fastened it carefully in his button-hole, posy-wise. Even the children had perceived that what Aunt Clara liked was a matter of interest to their new friend.
A servant came out to call the children in to their early supper; and Captain Cary, catching sight of Clara in the window, went to her with the little feather in his hand. “Philip says you make book-marks of these,” he said, and offered it to her.
There was no sign of coldness or resentment, neither was there any of subservience. It was the patience and affection of a tender and generous heart, and the self-respect of one who is not humbled by the pettishness of another.
Clara dropped her eyes as she took the little offering. “Yes,” she said gently; “and see the passage I am going to mark with it.”
The book she held was Landor’s Imaginary Conversations, open at the dialogue between Æschines and Phocion.
The sailor bent his head and read: “Your generosity is more pathetic than pity or than pain;” and, looking up quickly into her face, to see what she meant, saw her eyes humid.
His face brightened a little, but he said nothing. He was like a traveller among the Alps, who knows that a breath may bring the avalanche upon him.
After a few weeks of this hide-and-seek, Hester was moved to expostulate with her sister, whose conduct had astonished her. For, however gay and reckless Clara might be in talk, exaggerating on one side when she saw people lean too much to the other, and often saying what she did not mean, taking for granted that she was too well known to have her jests taken for earnest—in spite of this liveliness and effervescence of spirits, she had never been guilty of the slightest frivolity in her intercourse with gentlemen. Mrs. Yorke had taught her daughters, or had cherished in them the pure feminine instinct, to treat with careful reserve any man who should show a marked preference for them, unless that preference was fully reciprocated. Hester, therefore, felt herself called on to admonish.
“I must say, Clara, I think you do wrong,” she said. “Any one can see that the captain sets his life by you, and you treat him cruelly.”
“Do you wish me to marry him?” Clara asked in a cold voice.