In the first of these objects, he was measurably successful. Carice no longer shunned him. He was certain to see her, soon or late, whenever he came to Oakstead. With the current of feeling setting so strongly against Bergan, in every other quarter, she could not afford to lose any kindly mention of him, in this one. Though she still sat a little apart, it was plain that she lost no word of his conversation. Her face, as she listened, had the same look of patient interest, with which a solitary prisoner might watch for the flight of a bird across the small square of blue sky which is his only prospect.
Her parents noticed the change, and rejoiced in it, inasmuch as they did not suspect its cause. For it must be confessed that Doctor Remy acquitted himself marvellously well of the delicate task of mentioning Bergan in terms at once pleasant to the daughter's ears, and void of offence to those of the parents. He understood perfectly the art of constructing two-sided sentences, which gave Carice the impression that he was the young man's stanch, if undemonstrative, friend, at the same time that Mr. and Mrs. Bergan found in them abundant confirmation of their prejudices.
Of course, neither party discussed these impressions with the other. Carice, feeling the uselessness of the task, had long since ceased to defend Bergan; her parents, believing that his silence was operating more powerfully against him than any arguments of theirs could do, had ceased to attack him. Nor will it seem any paradox to say that, while they were unspeakably glad of his omission to write, it was, on the whole, his worst fault, in their eyes. They resented the slight to their daughter none the less, because it hastened the end which they ardently desired. To have sought her love was bad enough, but to have flung it aside so quickly, as a thing of no value, was a thousand times worse. Godfrey Bergan gnashed his teeth, whenever he thought of it, with an indignation for which he had no words.
One day, Doctor Remy, to his great gratification, found Carice alone in the library; and at once seized upon the opportunity to speak of Bergan, in kinder and fuller strain than he had ever yet ventured to do,--though not in a way to suggest that he was aware of any special bond between his listener and his subject. He described his first meeting with the young man, and its immediate results; he sketched various pleasant scenes and incidents that had come to pass under Mrs. Lyte's kindly roof; and he dwelt with hearty admiration upon Bergan's oratorical and intellectual gifts. Carice listened like one entranced. Her joy was too perfect to admit of any alloy, even when Doctor Remy went on to speak of Bergan as a young man whose character was still in process of formation, whose talents were, as yet, far in advance of his judgment, and whose kindly impulses often led him into error. Yet these few words, of all that had ever been spoken disparagingly of Bergan, in her hearing, were the only ones that had yet effected any lodgment in her mind. So artfully thrown in, among much that was friendly and encomiastic, as to be scarcely noticed at the moment, the time came when these words shot up, in Carice's memory, into manifold thorn-branches of suggestion.