“You consented to listen?”

“I really did.  It astonishes me now, but I thought I could not refuse.”

“My poor friend Vernon Whitford tried a love speech?”

“He? no:  Oh! no.”

“You discouraged him?”

“I?  No.”

“Gently, I mean.”

“No.”

“Surely you did not dream of trifling?  He has a deep heart.”

“Has he?”

“You ask that:  and you know something of him.”

“He did not expose it to me, dear; not even the surface of the mighty deep.”

Laetitia knitted her brows.

“No,” said Clara, “not a coquette:  she is not a coquette, I assure you.”

With a laugh, Laetitia replied:  “You have still the ‘dreadful power’ you made me feel that day.”

“I wish I could use it to good purpose!”

“He did not speak?”

“Of Switzerland, Tyrol, the Iliad, Antigone.”

“That was all?”

“No, Political Economy.  Our situation, you will own, was unexampled:  or mine was.  Are you interested in me?”

“I should be if I knew your sentiments.”

“I was grateful to Sir Willoughby:  grieved for Mr. Whitford.”

“Real grief?”

“Because the task unposed on him of showing me politely that he did not enter into his cousin’s ideas was evidently very great, extremely burdensome.”

“You, so quick-eyed in some things, Clara!”

“He felt for me.  I saw that in his avoidance of. . .  And he was, as he always is, pleasant.  We rambled over the park for I know not how long, though it did not seem long.”

“Never touching that subject?”

“Not ever neighbouring it, dear.  A gentleman should esteem the girl he would ask . . . certain questions.  I fancy he has a liking for me as a volatile friend.”

“If he had offered himself?”

“Despising me?”

“You can be childish, Clara.  Probably you delight to tease.  He had his time of it, and it is now my turn.”

“But he must despise me a little.”

“Are you blind?”

“Perhaps, dear, we both are, a little.”

The ladies looked deeper into one another.

“Will you answer me?” said Laetitia.

“Your if?  If he had, it would have been an act of condescension.”

“You are too slippery.”

“Stay, dear Laetitia.  He was considerate in forbearing to pain me.”

“That is an answer.  You allowed him to perceive that it would have pained you.”

“Dearest, if I may convey to you what I was, in a simile for comparison:  I think I was like a fisherman’s float on the water, perfectly still, and ready to go down at any instant, or up.  So much for my behaviour.”

“Similes have the merit of satisfying the finder of them, and cheating the hearer,” said Laetitia.  “You admit that your feelings would have been painful.”

“I was a fisherman’s float:  please admire my simile; any way you like, this way or that, or so quiet as to tempt the eyes to go to sleep.  And suddenly I might have disappeared in the depths, or flown in the air.  But no fish bit.”