Mr. Coyle looked at him so hard for an instant that he was visibly frightened at what he had said.
"Why, what we're talking about--the service." Young Lechmere gave a little gulp and added with a _naïveté_ almost pathetic to Spencer Coyle: "The dangers, you know!"
Young Lechmere's eyes expanded appealingly, and what his instructor saw in his pink face--he even thought he saw a tear--was the dread of a disappointment shocking in the degree in which the loyalty of admiration had been great.
"Is he--is he _afraid_?" repeated the honest lad, with a quaver of suspense.
"Dear no!" said Spencer Coyle, turning his back.
Young Lechmere felt a little snubbed and even a little ashamed; but he felt still more relieved.
Less than a week after this Spencer Coyle received a note from Miss Wingrave, who had immediately quitted London with her nephew. She proposed that he should come down to Paramore for the following Sunday--Owen was really so tiresome. On the spot, in that house of examples and memories and in combination with her poor dear father, who was "dreadfully annoyed," it might be worth their while to make a last stand. Mr. Coyle read between the lines of this letter that the party at Paramore had got over a good deal of ground since Miss Wingrave, in Baker Street, had treated his despair as superficial. She was not an insinuating woman, but she went so far as to put the question on the ground of his conferring a particular favour on an afflicted family; and she expressed the pleasure it would give them if he should be accompanied by Mrs. Coyle, for whom she inclosed a separate invitation. She mentioned that she was also writing, subject to Mr. Coyle's approval, to young Lechmere. She thought such a nice manly boy might do her wretched nephew some good. The celebrated crammer determined to embrace this opportunity; and now it was the case not so much that he was angry as that he was anxious. As he directed his answer to Miss Wingrave's letter he caught himself smiling at the thought that at bottom he was going to defend his young friend rather than to attack him. He said to his wife, who was a fair, fresh, slow woman--a person of much more presence than himself--that she had better take Miss Wingrave at her word: it was such an extraordinary, such a fascinating specimen of an old English home. This last allusion was amicably sarcastic--he had already accused the good lady more than once of being in love with Owen Wingrave. She admitted that she was, she even gloried in her passion; which shows that the subject, between them, was treated in a liberal spirit. She carried out the joke by accepting the invitation with eagerness. Young Lechmere was delighted to do the same; his instructor had good-naturedly taken the view that the little break would freshen him up for his last spurt.