'Your grandfather is very anxious about you.'
'Not a bit of it, Mr Montague. Grandfather knows very well where I am. There! Grandfather doesn't want me back, and I ain't a going. Why should the Squire bother himself about me? I don't bother myself about him.'
'He's afraid, Miss Ruggles, that you are trusting yourself to a young man who is not trustworthy.'
'I can mind myself very well, Mr Montague.'
'Tell me this. Have you seen Sir Felix Carbury since you've been in town?' Ruby, whose blushes came very easily, now flushed up to her forehead. 'You may be sure that he means no good to you. What can come of an intimacy between you and such a one as he?'
'I don't see why I shouldn't have my friend, Mr Montague, as well as you. Howsomever, if you'll not tell, I'll be ever so much obliged.'
'But I must tell Mr Carbury.'
'Then I ain't obliged to you one bit,' said Ruby, shutting the door.
Paul as he walked away could not help thinking of the justice of Ruby's reproach to him. What business had he to take upon himself to be a Mentor to any one in regard to an affair of love;--he, who had engaged himself to marry Mrs Hurtle, and who the evening before had for the first time declared his love to Hetta Carbury?
In regard to Mrs Hurtle he had got a reprieve, as he thought, for two days;--but it did not make him happy or even comfortable. As he walked back to his lodgings he knew it would have been better for him to have had the interview over. But, at any rate, he could now think of Hetta Carbury, and the words he had spoken to her. Had he heard that declaration which she had made to her mother, he would have been able for the hour to have forgotten Mrs Hurtle.