On the other hand, whatever Mrs. Lessingham might have in her mind, she certainly would not expose it in dialogue with her niece.  Cecily was in an unusual position for a girl of her age; she had, he believed, no intimate friend; at all events, she had none who also knew him.  Girls, to be sure, had their own way of talking over delicate points, just as married women had theirs, and with intimates of the ordinary kind Cecily must have come by now to consider her guardian as a male creature of flesh and blood.  What did it mean, that she did not?

A question difficult of debate, involving much that the mind is wont to slur over in natural scruple.  Mallard was no slave to the imbecile convention which supposes a young girl sexless in her understanding; he could not, in conformity with the school of hypocritic idealism, regard Cecily as a child of woman’s growth.  No.  She had the fruits of a modern education; she had a lucid brain; of late she had mingled and conversed with a variety of men and women, most of them anything but crassly conventional.  It was this very aspect of her training that had caused him so much doubt.  And he knew by this time what his doubt principally meant; in a measure, it came of native conscientiousness, of prejudice which testified to his origin; but, more than that, it signified simple jealousy.  Secretly, he did not like her outlook upon the world to be so unrestrained; he would have preferred her to view life as a simpler matter.  Partly for this reason did her letters so disturb him.  No; it would have been an insult to imagine her with the moral sensibilities of a child of twelve.

Was she intellectual at the expense of her emotional being?  Was she guarded by nature against these disturbances?  Somewhat ridiculous to ask that, and then look up at her face effulgent with the joy of life.  She who could not speak without the note of emotion, who so often gave way to lyrical outbursts of delight, who was so warm-hearted in her friendship, whose every movement was in glad harmony with the loveliness of her form,—­must surely have the corresponding capabilities of passion.

After all—­and it was fetching a great compass to reach a point so near at hand—­might she not take him at his own profession?  Might she not view him as a man indeed, and one not yet past his youth, but still as a man who suffered no trivialities to interfere with the grave objects of his genius?  She had so long had him represented to her in that way—­from the very first of their meetings, indeed.  Grant her mature sense and a reflective mind, was that any reason why she should probe subtly the natural appearance of her friend, and attribute to him that which he gave no sign of harbouring?  Why must she be mysteriously conscious of his inner being, rather than take him ingenuously for what he seemed?  She had instruction and wit, but she was only a girl; her experience was as good as nil.  Mallard repeated that to himself as he looked at Mrs.