‘A pity,’ said the Lancer, when he had heard who she was, and under his moustache he murmured to Albinia, ‘She is rather in Emily’s style.’
‘Oh, Fred,’ thought Albinia, ‘after all, it may be lucky that you aren’t going to stay here!’
When Albinia was alone with her brother, she could not help saying, ‘Maurice, you were right to scold me; I reproached you with thinking life made up of predicaments. I think mine is made of blunders!’
‘Ah! I saw you were harassed to-day,’ said her brother kindly.
‘Whenever one is happy, one does something wrong!’
‘You are generous not to say you warned me months ago. Mind, it is no fault of hers, she is behaving beautifully; but oh! the absurdity, and the worst of it is, I have promised not to tell Edmund.’
‘Then don’t tell me. You have a judgment quite good enough for use.’
‘No, I have not. I have only sense, and that only serves me for what other people ought to do.’
‘Then ask Albinia what Mrs. Kendal ought to do.’
Gilbert came in soon after their departure, with an odd, dishevelled, abstracted look, and muttering something inaudible about not knowing the time. His depression absolutely courted notice, but as a slight cough would at any time reduce him to despair, he obtained no particular observation, except from Sophy, who made much of him, flushed at Genevieve’s name, and looked reproachful, that it was evident that she was his confidante. Several times did Albinia try to lead her to enter on the subject, but she set up her screen of silence. It was disappointing, for Albinia had believed better things of her sense, and hardly made allowance for the different aspect of the love-sorrows of seventeen, viewed from fifteen or twenty-six--vexatious, too, to be treated with dry reserve, and probably viewed as a rock in the course of true love; and provoking to see perpetual tete-a-tetes that could hardly fail to fill Sophy’s romantic head with folly.
At the end of another week, Albinia received the following note:--
‘I would not trouble you again, but this is the third within four days. I returned the two former ones to himself, but he continues to write. May I ask your permission to speak to my relatives, for I feel that I ought to hide this no longer from them, and that we must take some measures for ending it. He does me the honour to wait near the house, and I never dare go out, since--for I will confess all to you, madame--he met me by the river on Monday. I am beginning to fear that his assiduities have been observed, and I should be much obliged if you would tell me how to act. Your kind perseverance in your goodness towards me is my greatest comfort, and I hope that you will still continue it, for indeed it is most unwillingly that I am a cause of perplexity and vexation to you. Entreating your pardon,