"No! I am glad that anything I am likely to do has a chance of pleasing you. But why should you not object just at present? Why not now as well as at any other time?"
"Because I should like you to be a little misanthropical just now, and a little distrustful—of men, that is to say, Miss Grey."
She colored slightly, although she had no idea of his meaning yet.
"I always thought you were full of trust in the whole human race, Mr. Heron; I thought you liked everybody and believed in everybody. Now you tell me to distrust all mankind."
"I didn't say that."
"No? Some particular person, then?"
"Some particular person, perhaps. At least I don't mean exactly that," Heron hastened to explain, his conscience smiting him at the thought that perhaps after all he might be suggesting unjust suspicions of an absent man who was a sort of friend. "I only mean that you are very generous and unselfish, and that there might be persons who might try to make use of your good nature, and whom perhaps you might not quite understand. I don't know whether I ought to speak about this at all."
"Nor I, Mr. Heron, I am sure; for I really don't know what you are speaking of or what mysterious danger is hanging over me. But I hope there is something of the kind, for I should so like to resemble a heroine of romance."
"There is not anything very romantic in prospect so far as I know," he said, now almost wishing he had said nothing, and yet feeling in his heart a serious fear that Minola might be led to put too much faith in Blanchet. "But if I might speak out freely, and without any fear of your misunderstanding me or being offended, there is something, Miss Grey, that I should very much like to say." He spoke in an uneasy and constrained way, forcing himself on to an ungracious task.
"You have been preaching distrust to me, Mr. Heron, and you have been finding fault generally with all women who trust anybody. To show you how your lessons are thrown away on me, I shall certainly trust you as much as you like, and I shall not misunderstand anything you say nor be offended by it." There was something of her old sweet frankness in her manner as she spoke these words, and Heron was warmed by it.