her mind was afflicted by the “something illogical” in him that we readily discover when our natures are no longer running free, and then at once we yearn for a disputation.  She resolved that she would one day, one distant day, provoke it—­upon what?  The special point eluded her.  The world is too huge a client, and too pervious, too spotty, for a girl to defend against a man.  That “something illogical” had stirred her feelings more than her intellect to revolt.  She could not constitute herself the advocate of Mr. Whitford.  Still she marked the disputation for an event to come.

Meditating on it, she fell to picturing Sir Willoughby’s face at the first accents of his bride’s decided disagreement with him.  The picture once conjured up would not be laid.  He was handsome; so correctly handsome, that a slight unfriendly touch precipitated him into caricature.  His habitual air of happy pride, of indignant contentment rather, could easily be overdone.  Surprise, when he threw emphasis on it, stretched him with the tall eyebrows of a mask—­limitless under the spell of caricature; and in time, whenever she was not pleased by her thoughts, she had that, and not his likeness, for the vision of him.  And it was unjust, contrary to her deeper feelings; she rebuked herself, and as much as her naughty spirit permitted, she tried to look on him as the world did; an effort inducing reflections upon the blessings of ignorance.  She seemed to herself beset by a circle of imps, hardly responsible for her thoughts.

He outshone Mr. Whitford in his behaviour to young Crossjay.  She had seen him with the boy, and he was amused, indulgent, almost frolicsome, in contradistinction to Mr. Whitford’s tutorly sharpness.  He had the English father’s tone of a liberal allowance for boys’ tastes and pranks, and he ministered to the partiality of the genus for pocket-money.  He did not play the schoolmaster, like bookworms who get poor little lads in their grasp.

Mr. Whitford avoided her very much.  He came to Upton Park on a visit to her father, and she was not particularly sorry that she saw him only at table.  He treated her by fits to a level scrutiny of deep-set eyes unpleasantly penetrating.  She had liked his eyes.  They became unbearable; they dwelt in the memory as if they had left a phosphorescent line.  She had been taken by playmate boys in her infancy to peep into hedge-leaves, where the mother-bird brooded on the nest; and the eyes of the bird in that marvellous dark thickset home, had sent her away with worlds of fancy.  Mr. Whitford’s gaze revived her susceptibility, but not the old happy wondering.  She was glad of his absence, after a certain hour that she passed with Willoughby, a wretched hour to remember.  Mr. Whitford had left, and Willoughby came, bringing bad news of his mother’s health.  Lady Patterne was fast failing.  Her son spoke of the loss she would be to him; he spoke of the dreadfulness of death.  He alluded to his own death to come carelessly, with a philosophical air.