Mr. Lindsay heard her in silence, with his mild eyes fixed on the carpet. But when she had finished he looked up again, and she was shocked to find that the gentle obstinacy which had been in his face before was there still.
"I am, indeed, sorry for your disappointment," he said sweetly. "Or rather I should be if it were such a one that you could not hope to--to--in fact, to get over it. But--but these are trials which may be, perhaps, only sent to show that you, even you, happily placed as you are and gifted of the Almighty, are human, after all, and not beyond suffering. And--and it may give you an opportunity of seeing that there are others who can appreciate you better, and who would only be too glad to--to--to--"
"To step into his shoes!" finished Doreen for him, with a sigh. "I know what you were going to say, and if you won't be stopped, I suppose I must hear you out. But, oh, dear, I do wish you wouldn't!"
He was not to be put off like that. In fact, he was not to be put off by any available means. He sighed a little, and persisted.
"I am glad you have guessed what I was going to say, Miss Wedmore, though I should not have put it quite in that way. And why should you not want to hear it? I should have thought that even you must be not quite indifferent to any man's honest feelings of esteem and admiration toward you!"
Doreen was looking at him helplessly, with wide-open eyes. Did he really think any girl was ever moved by this sort of address, deliberately uttered, with the words well chosen, well considered? As different as possible from the abrupt, staccato method used by Dudley in the dear old days!
"Oh, I'm not indifferent at all!" said she, quickly. "I'm never indifferent to anything or anybody. But I'm sorry, very sorry that--that you should feel--"
She stopped short, looked at him for a moment curiously, and asked with great abruptness:
"_Do_ you feel anything in the matter? _Really_ feel, I mean? I don't think you do; I don't think you can. You couldn't speak so _nicely_, if you did."
He looked at her with gentle reproach. His was not a very tempestuous feeling, perhaps, but it was genuine, honest, sincere. He thought her the most splendid specimen of handsome, healthy well-brought-up womanhood he had ever met, and he thought also that the beneficent influence of the Church, exercised through the unworthy medium of himself, would mold her into a creature as near perfection as was humanly possible.