or what Mdlle.  Belmarche would call legerete.  He could not be reserved—­he was naturally free and open—­and how could she have put such a construction on his frankness, when Sophy herself had long been gradually arriving at a conviction of the truth!  It was a comfort at least to remember that it had not been the fabrication of her own brain, she had respectable authority for the idea, and she trusted to its prompter to participate in her indignation, argue Ulick out of so poor a match, and at least put a decided veto upon Sophy’s Spartan magnanimity—­ Sophy’s health and feelings being the subject, she sometimes thought, which concerned him above all.

Ah! but the evil had not been his doing.  He had but gossiped out a pleasant conjecture to his wife as a trustworthy help-meet.  What business had she to go and telegraph that conjecture, with her significant eyes, to the very last person who ought to have shared it, and then to have kept up the mischief by believing it herself, and acting, looking, and arranging, as on a certainty implied, though not expressed?  Mrs. Osborne or Mrs. Drury might have spoken more broadly, they could not have acted worse, thought she to herself.

The notion might never have been suggested; Sophy might have simply enjoyed these years of intimacy, and even if her heart had been touched, it would have been unconsciously, and the pain and shame of unrequited affection have merely been a slight sense of neglect, a small dreariness, lost in eagerness for the happiness of both friends.  Now, two years of love that she had been allowed to imagine returned and sanctioned, and love with the depth and force of Sophy’s whole nature—­the shame of having loved unasked, the misery of having lived in a delusion—­how would they act upon a being of her morbid tendency, frail constitution, and proud spirit?  As Albinia thought of the passive endurance of last year’s estrangement, her heart sank within her!  Illness—­brain-fever—­permanent ill-health and crushed spirits—­nay, death itself she augured—­and all—­all her own fault!  The last and best of Edmund’s children so cruelly and deeply wounded, and by her folly!  She longed to throw herself at his feet and ask his pardon, but it was Sophy’s secret as well as hers, and how could womanhood betray that unrequited love?  At least she thought, for noble Sophy’s sake, she would not raise a finger to hinder the marriage, but as to forwarding it, or promoting the courtship under Sophy’s very eyes—­that would be like murdering her outright, and she would join Mr. Kendal with all her might in removing their daughter from the trying spectacle.  Talk of Aunt Maria!  This trouble was ten thousand times worse!

Albinia began to watch the timepiece, longing to have the evening over, that she might prepare Mr. Kendal.  It ended at last, and Genevieve took up her candle, bade good-night, and disappeared.  Sophy lingered, till coming forward to her father as he stood by the fire, she said, ’Papa, did you not promise Gilbert that Genevieve should be as another daughter?’