I
had known her from her earliest years--I had seen her tested, as
she grew up, in more than one trying family crisis, and my long
experience made me attach an importance to her hesitation under
the circumstances here detailed, which I should certainly not have
felt in the case of another woman. I could see no cause for any
uneasiness or any doubt, but she had made me a little uneasy, and
a little doubtful, nevertheless. In my youth, I should have
chafed and fretted under the irritation of my own unreasonable
state of mind. In my age, I knew better, and went out
philosophically to walk it off.
II
We all met again at dinner-time.
Sir Percival was in such boisterous high spirits that I hardly
recognised him as the same man whose quiet tact, refinement, and
good sense had impressed me so strongly at the interview of the
morning. The only trace of his former self that I could detect
reappeared, every now and then, in his manner towards Miss
Fairlie. A look or a word from her suspended his loudest laugh,
checked his gayest flow of talk, and rendered him all attention to
her, and to no one else at table, in an instant. Although he
never openly tried to draw her into the conversation, he never
lost the slightest chance she gave him of letting her drift into
it by accident, and of saying the words to her, under those
favourable circumstances, which a man with less tact and delicacy
would have pointedly addressed to her the moment they occurred to
him.
Pages:
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236