“Did you not like--the gentleman?” said Frances. Nothing could be more modest than this question, and yet it brought the blood to her face. She had never heard the ordinary _badinage_ on this subject, or thought of love with anything but awe and reverence, as a mystery altogether beyond her and out of discussion. She did not look at her sister as she put the question. Constance lay back in the long wicker-work chair, well lined with cushions, which was her father’s favourite seat, with her hands clasped behind her head, in one of those attitudes of complete _abandon_ which Frances had been trained to think impossible to a girl.
“Did I like--the gentleman? I did not think that question could ever again be put to me in an original way. I see now what is the good of a sister. Mamma and Markham and all my people had such a different way of looking at it. You must know that _that_ is not the first question, whether you like the man. As for that, I liked him--well enough. There was nothing to--dislike in him.”
Frances turned her eyes to her sister’s face with something like reproach. “I may not have used the right word. I have never spoken on such subjects before.”
“I have always been told that men are dreadful prudes,” said Constance. “I suppose papa has brought you up to think that such things must never be spoken of. I’ll tell you what is original about it. I have been asked if he was not rich enough, if he was not handsome enough, if it was because he had no title: and I have been asked if I loved him, which was nonsense. I could answer all that; but you I can’t answer. Don’t I like him? I was not going to be persecuted about him. It was Markham who put this into my head. ‘Why don’t you go to your father,’ he said, ‘if you won’t hear reason? He is just the sort of person to understand you, if we don’t.’ So, then, I took them at their word. I came off--to papa.”
“Does Markham dislike papa? I mean, doesn’t he think----”
“I know what you mean. They don’t think that papa has good sense. They think him romantic, and all that. I have always been accustomed to think so too. But the curious thing is that he isn’t,” said Constance, with an injured air. “I suppose, however foolish one’s father may be for himself, he still feels that he must stand on the parents’ side.”