She remembered his conversation with her brother and her
brother's impression; she thought of the unloverlike dread of ague in
Emily's moonlight walk; she recalled the many occasions when she had
thought him remiss, and she could not but acquit him of any designed
flirtation, any dangerous tenderness, 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.
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