She added:  “You have not found him sympathetic?  He is.  You fancy him brooding, gloomy?  He is the reverse, he is cheerful, he is indifferent to personal misfortune.  Dr. Corney says there is no laugh like Vernon Whitford’s, and no humour like his.  Latterly he certainly . . .  But it has not been your cruel word grumpiness.  The truth is, he is anxious about Crossjay:  and about other things; and he wants to leave.  He is at a disadvantage beside very lively and careless gentlemen at present, but your ‘Triton ashore’ is unfair, it is ugly.  He is, I can say, the truest man I know.”

“I did not question his goodness, Laetitia.”

“You threw an accent on it.”

“Did I?  I must be like Crossjay, who declares he likes fun best.”

“Crossjay ought to know him, if anybody should.  Mr. Whitford has defended you against me, Clara, even since I took to calling you Clara.  Perhaps when you supposed him so like your ancient governess, he was meditating how he could aid you.  Last night he gave me reasons for thinking you would do wisely to confide in Mrs. Mountstuart.  It is no longer necessary.  I merely mention it.  He is a devoted friend.”

“He is an untiring pedestrian.”

“Oh!”

Colonel De Craye, after hovering near the ladies in the hope of seeing them divide, now adopted the system of making three that two may come of it.

As he joined them with his glittering chatter, Laetitia looked at Clara to consult her, and saw the face rosy as a bride’s.

The suspicion she had nursed sprung out of her arms a muscular fact on the spot.

“Where is my dear boy?” Clara said.

“Out for a holiday,” the colonel answered in her tone.

“Advise Mr. Whitford not to waste his time in searching for Crossjay, Laetitia.  Crossjay is better out of the way to-day.  At least, I thought so just now.  Has he pocket-money, Colonel De Craye?”

“My lord can command his inn.”

“How thoughtful you are!”

Laetitia’s bosom swelled upon a mute exclamation, equivalent to:  “Woman! woman! snared ever by the sparkling and frivolous! undiscerning of the faithful, the modest and beneficent!”

In the secret musings of moralists this dramatic rhetoric survives.

The comparison was all of her own making, and she was indignant at the contrast, though to what end she was indignant she could not have said, for she had no idea of Vernon as a rival of De Craye in the favour of a plighted lady.  But she was jealous on behalf of her sex:  her sex’s reputation seemed at stake, and the purity of it was menaced by Clara’s idle preference of the shallower man.  When the young lady spoke so carelessly of being like Crossjay, she did not perhaps know that a likeness, based on a similarity of their enthusiasms, loves, and appetites, had been established between women and boys.  Laetitia had formerly chafed at it, rejecting it utterly, save when now and then in a season of bitterness she handed here and there a volatile young lady (none but the young) to be stamped with the degrading brand.  Vernon might be as philosophical as he pleased.  To her the gaiety of these two, Colonel De Craye and Clara Middleton, was distressingly musical:  they harmonized painfully.  The representative of her sex was hurt by it.