"People must always be ready for them, though," said Rachel "And they are," said Alick, with grave exultation in his tone.
Then, after a pause, she led back the conversation to its personal
character, by saying. "Do you mean that the reception of this cross was
no gratification to you?"
"No, I am not so absurd," he replied, but he added sadly, "That was
damped quite otherwise. The news that I was named for it came almost in
the same breath with that of my father's death, and he had not heard I
was to receive it."
"Ah! I can understand."
"And you can see how intolerable was the fuss my good relations made
with me just when the loss was fresh on me, and with that of my two
chief friends, among my brother officers, fellows beside whom I was
nobody, and there was my uncle's blindness getting confirmed. Was not
that enough to sicken one with being stuck up for a lion, and constantly
poked up by the showwoman, under pretext of keeping up one's spirits!"
"And you were--I mean were you--too ill to escape?"
"I was less able to help myself than Miss Williams is. There had been
a general smash of all the locomotive machinery on this side, and the
wretched monster could do nothing but growl at his visitors."
"Should you growl very much if I introduced you to Emily Grey? You
see it is a matter of justice and truth to tell her now, after having
contradicted her so flatly. I will wait to let you get out of the way
first if you like, but I think that would be unkind to her; and if you
ever do dance, I wish you would dance with her."
"With all my heart," he answered.
"Oh, thank you," said Rachel, warmly.
He observed with some amusement Rachel's utter absence of small
dexterities, and of even the effort to avoid the humiliation of a
confession of her error. Miss Grey and a boy partner had wandered into
the conservatory, and were rather dismally trying to seem occupied with
the camellias when Rachel made her way to them, and though he could not
actually hear the words, he knew pretty well what they were. "Emily,
you were right after all, and I was mistaken," and then as he drew near,
"Miss Grey, Captain Keith wishes to be introduced to you."
It had been a great shock to Rachel's infallibility, and as she slowly
began working her way in search of her mother, after observing
the felicity of Emily's bright eyes, she fell into a musing on the
advantages of early youth in its indiscriminating powers of
enthusiasm for anything distinguished for anything, and that sense
of self-exaltation in any sort of contact with a person who had been
publicly spoken of. "There is genuine heroism in him," thought Rachel,
"but it is just in what Emily would never appreciate--it is in the
feeling that he could not help doing as he did; the half-grudging his
reward to himself because other deeds have passed unspoken. I wonder
whether his ironical humour would allow him to see that Mr. Mauleverer
is as veritable a hero in yielding hopes of consideration, prospects,
honours, to his sense of truth and uprightness. If he would only look
with an unprejudiced eye, I know he would be candid."