'I'm glad to find you in a quiet corner,' said
he, seating himself, and confirmed my worst anticipations.

'I'm writing to John,' I said, and again applied myself to my
pen-handle. It is a trick Cecily has since done her best in vain to cure
me of.

'I am going to interrupt you,' he said. 'I have not had an opportunity
of talking to you for some time.'

'I like that!' I exclaimed derisively.

'And I want to tell you that I am very much charmed with Cecily.'

'Well,' I said, 'I am not going to gratify you by saying anything
against her.'

'You don't deserve her, you know.'

'I won't dispute that. But, if you don't mind--I'm not sure that I'll
stand being abused, dear boy.'

'I quite see it isn't any use. Though one spoke with the tongues of men
and of angels--'

'And had not charity,' I continued for him. 'Precisely. I won't go on,
but your quotation is very apt.'

'I so bow down before her simplicity. It makes a wide and beautiful
margin for the rest of her character. She is a girl Ruskin would have
loved.'

'I wonder,' said I. 'He did seem fond of the simple type, didn't he?'

'Her mind is so clear, so transparent. The motive spring of everything
she says and does is so direct. Don't you find you can most completely
depend upon her?'

'Oh yes,' I said; 'certainly. I nearly always know what she is going
to say before she says it, and under given circumstances I can tell
precisely what she will do.'

'I fancy her sense of duty is very beautifully developed.'

'It is,' I said. 'There is hardly a day when I do not come in contact
with it.'

'Well, that is surely a good thing. And I find that calm poise of hers
very restful.'

'I would not have believed that so many virtues could reside in one
young lady,' I said, taking refuge in flippancy, 'and to think that she
should be my daughter!'

'As I believe you know, that seems to me rather a cruel stroke of
destiny, Mrs. Farnham.'

'Oh yes, I know! You have a constructive imagination, Dacres. You
don't seem to see that the girl is protected by her limitations, like a
tortoise. She lives within them quite secure and happy and content. How
determined you are to be sorry for her!'

Mr. Tottenham looked at the end of this lively exchange as though he
sought for a polite way of conveying to me that I rather was the limited
person. He looked as if he wished he could say things. The first of them
would be, I saw, that he had quite a different conception of