"I do love her, with a fond and grateful affection. She was my first friend outside my own home; she is my benefactress. But I have to think of your welfare, Christabel--your welfare in this world and the world to come. Both will be in danger if you stay here and marry Leonard Tregonell."
"I am going to stay here; and I am not going to marry Leonard. Will that assurance satisfy you? One would think I had no will of my own."
"You have not the will to withstand your aunt. She parted you and Mr. Hamleigh; and she will marry you to her son."
"The parting was my act," said Christabel.
"It was your aunt who brought it about. Had she been true and loyal there would have been no such parting. If you had only trusted to me in that crisis, I think I might have saved you some sorrow; but what's done cannot be undone."
"There are some cases in which a woman must judge for herself," Christabel replied, coldly.
"A woman, yes--a woman who has had some experience of life: but not a girl, who knows nothing of the hard real world and its temptations, difficulties, struggles. Don't let us talk of it any more. I cannot trust myself to speak when I remember how shamefully he was treated."
Christabel stared in amazement. The calm, practical Miss Bridgeman spoke with a passionate vehemence which took the girl's breath away; and yet, in her heart of hearts, Christabel was grateful to her for this sudden flash of anger.
"I did not know you liked him so much--that you were so sorry for him," she faltered.
"Then you ought to have known, if you ever took the trouble to remember how good he always was to me, how sympathetic, how tolerant of my company when it was forced upon him day after day, how seemingly unconscious of my plainness and dowdiness. Why there was not a present he gave me which did not show the most thoughtful study of my tastes and fancies. I never look at one of his gifts--I was not obliged to fling his offerings back in his face as you were--without wondering that a fine gentleman could be so full of small charities and delicate courtesy. He was like one of those wits and courtiers one reads of in Burnet--not spotless, like Tennyson's Arthur--but the very essence of refinement and good feeling. God bless him! wherever he is."