"Not you, Phil; a thousand times not you."
"Then I do not care much what other people say," she replied simply. "Do you know, Jack, it seems to me as if we never ought to care for what people, besides people we love, say about us."
"But it is I who have done wrong," said Jack.
"Have you, Jack? Oh, then I forgive you. I think I know you. You should have come to me with an unreal smile on your face, and pretended the greatest deference to my opinion, even when you knew it wasn't worth having. That is what the curate does to young ladies. I saw him yesterday taking Miss Herries's opinion on Holman Hunt's picture. She said it was 'sweetly pretty.' He said, 'Do you really think so?' in such a solemn voice, as if he wasn't quite sure that the phrase summed up the whole picture, but was going to think it over quietly. Don't laugh, Jack, because I cannot read like other people, and all I have to go by is what Mr. Dyson told me, and Agatha tells me, and what I see—and—and what you tell me, Jack, which is worth all the rest to me."
The tears came into her eyes, but only for a moment, and she brushed them aside.
"And I forgive you, Jack, all the more because you did not treat me as you would have treated the girls who seem to me so lifeless and languid, and—Jack, it may be wrong to say it, but Oh, so small! What compliment could you have paid me better than to single me out for your friend—you who have seen so much and done so much—my friend—mine? We were friends from the first, were we not? And I have never since hidden anything from you, Jack, and never will."
He kept it down still, this mighty yearning that filled his heart, but he could not bear to look her in the face. Every word that she said stabbed him like a knife, because it showed her childish innocence and her utter unconsciousness of what her words might mean.
And then she laid her little hand in his.
"And now you have compromised me, as they would say? What does it matter Jack? We can go on always just the same as we have been doing, can we not?"
He shook his head and answered huskily, "No, Phil. Your guardian will not allow it. You must obey him. He says that I am to come here less frequently; that I must not do you—he is quite right, Phil—any more mischief; and that you are to have your first season in London without any ties or entanglements."