He expressed the utmost
surprise and distress--he thought Lecount had done her best to be
agreeable on the drive to Dunwich--he hoped and trusted there was some
unfortunate mistake.
"Do you mean to say, sir," pursued the captain, severely, "that you have
not noticed the circumstance yourself? As a man of honor and a man of
observation, you can't tell me that! Your housekeeper's superficial
civility has not hidden your housekeeper's real feeling. My niece has
seen it, and so have you, and so have I. My niece, Mr. Vanstone, is
a sensitive, high-spirited girl; and she has positively declined to
cultivate Mrs. Lecount's society for the future. Don't misunderstand me!
To my niece as well as to myself, the attraction of _your_ society, Mr.
Vanstone, remains the same. Miss Bygrave simply declines to be an apple
of discord (if you will permit the classical allusion) cast into your
household. I think she is right so far, and I frankly confess that
I have exaggerated a nervous indisposition, from which she is really
suffering, into a serious illness--purely and entirely to prevent these
two ladies for the present from meeting every day on the Parade, and
from carrying unpleasant impressions of each other into your domestic
establishment and mine.
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