Page:The time spirit; a romantic tale (IA timespiritromant00snaiiala).pdf/218

 "It stands to reason, I'm afraid. If I lived at Bridport House and the future head of the Family married the housekeeper's niece, I should be bound to look on it as a perfectly hopeless arrangement."

He honored this candor. Choosing his words with great delicacy, he could but pay homage to such clear-sighted honesty. "I only hope you will not blame us too much," he said finally, with an odd change of voice.

"I don't blame you at all. You are as you are. If I lived here I am sure those would be my feelings."

The old man was touched by this generosity. Lest he should overrate it, however, she added quickly with a flash of pride, "Besides, I should simply hate to go where I was not wanted."

Patrician to the bone, he admired that, too. Every inch of her rang true. Somehow it had become terribly difficult to treat her in the only way the circumstances permitted. But no matter what his private feelings, he must hold them in check.

"Well, I think, Miss Lawrence," he said, with a return to the dryness of the man of the world, "you ought to congratulate yourself that you don't live here." But suddenly his voice trailed off. "You would not be half so fine as you are"—after all, he couldn't conceal that a deeply-stirred old man was speaking—"had you been born and bred in a hot-house."

She flushed at the unexpected words. Quite suddenly her eyes brimmed with tears.

"If I have said anything that wounds I humbly apologize," he said, with a gentleness that to her was adorable.

"Oh, no! It is only that I had not expected to have such a compliment paid me."