He bad spoken to her but very rarely or indirectly as yet of his own religious or philosophical beliefs.  She was in a stage when such things interested her but little, and reticence in personal matters was so much the law of his life that even to her expansion was difficult.  So that—­inevitably—­she was arrested, for the moment, as any quick perception must be, by the things that unveil character.

Then an upheaval of indignant feeling swept the impression away.  All that he said might be ideally, profoundly true—­but—­the red blood of the common life was lacking in every word of it!  He ought to be incapable of saying it now.  Her passionate question was, how could he argue—­how could he hold and mark the ethical balance—­when a woman was suffering, when children were to be left fatherless?  Besides—­the ethical balance itself—­does it not alter according to the hands that hold it—­poacher or landlord, rich or poor?

But she was too exhausted to carry on the contest in words.  Both felt it would have to be renewed.  But she said to herself secretly that Mr. Wharton, when he got to work, would alter the whole aspect of affairs.  And she knew well that her vantage-ground as towards Aldous was strong.

Then at last he was free to turn his whole attention for a little to her and her physical state, which made him miserable.  He had never imagined that any one, vigorous and healthy as she was, could look so worn out in so short a time.  She let him talk to her—­lament, entreat, advise—­and at last she took advantage of his anxiety and her admissions to come to the point, to plead that the marriage should be put off.

She used the same arguments that she had done to her mother.

“How can I bear to be thinking of these things?”—­she pointed a shaking finger at the dress patterns lying scattered on the table—­“with this agony, this death, under my eyes?”

It was a great blow to him, and the practical inconveniences involved were great.  But the fibre of him—­of which she had just felt the toughness—­was delicate and sensitive as her own, and after a very short recoil he met her with great chivalry and sweetness, agreeing that everything should be put off for six weeks, till Easter in fact.  She would have been very grateful to him but that something—­some secret thought—­checked the words she tried to say.

“I must go home then,” he said, rising and trying to smile.  “I shall have to make things straight with Aunt Neta, and set a great many arrangements in train.  Now, you will try to think of something else?  Let me leave you with a book that I can imagine you will read.”

She let herself be tended and thought for.  At the last, just as he was going, he said: 

“Have you seen Mr. Wharton at all since this happened?”

His manner was just as usual.  She felt that her eye was guilty, but the darkness of the firelit room shielded her.