“Please to remember, dear—­it astonishes me that you forget it—­ that I have a responsibility to Mr. Mallard.  I have no legal charge of you.  With every reason, Mr. Mallard may reproach me if I countenance what it is impossible for him to approve.”

Cecily searched the speaker’s face.

“Do you mean,” she asked gravely, “that Mr. Mallard will disapprove—­what I have done?”

“I can say nothing on that point.  But I am very sure that he would not approve of this meeting, if he could know what was happening.  I must communicate with him at once.  Until he comes, or writes, it is your duty, my dear, to decline this interview.  Believe me, it is your duty.”

Mrs. Lessingham spoke more earnestly than she ever had done to her niece.  Indeed, earnest speech was not frequent upon her lips when she talked with Cecily.  In spite of the girl’s nature, there had never existed between them warmer relations than those of fondness and interest on one side, and gentleness with respect on the other.  Cecily was well aware of this something lacking in their common life; she had wished, not seldom these last two years, to supply the want, but found herself unable, and grew conscious that her aunt gave all it was in her power to bestow.  For this very reason, she found it impossible to utter herself in the present juncture as she could have done to a mother—­as she could have done to Miriam; impossible, likewise, to insist on her heart’s urgent desire, though she knew not how she should forbear it.  To refuse compliance would have been something more than failure in dutifulness; she would have felt it as harshness, and perhaps injustice, to one with whom she involuntarily stood on terms of ceremony.

“May I write a reply to this letter?” she asked, after a silence.

“I had rather you allowed me to speak for you to Mr. Elgar.  To write and to see him are the same thing.  Surely you can forget yourself for a moment, and regard this from my point of view.”

“I don’t know how far you may be led by your sense of responsibility.  Remember that you have insisted to me on your prejudice against Mr. Elgar.”

“Vainly enough,” returned the other, with a smile.  “If you prefer it, I will myself write a line to be given to Mr. Elgar when he calls.  Of course, you shall see what I write.”

Cecily turned away, and stood in struggle with herself.  She had not foreseen a conflict of this kind.  Surprise, and probably vexation, she was prepared for; irony, argument, she was quite ready to face; but it had not entered her mind that Mrs. Lessingham would invoke authority to oppose her.  Such a step was alien to all the habits of their intercourse, to the spirit of her education.  She had deemed herself a woman, and free; what else could result from Mrs. Lessingham’s method of training and developing her?  This disillusion gave a shock to her self-respect; she suffered from a sense of shame; with difficulty she subdued resentment and impulses yet more rebellious.  It was ignoble to debate in this way concerning that of which she could not yet speak formally with her own mind; to contend like an insubordinate school-girl, when the point at issue was the dearest interest of her womanhood.