“My business is not with Jeanie,” he said, briskly. “My business is with old Sarah, who is not to be found; but you will do quite as well, Perfitt. I want to send a note to Miss Arden. If Jeanie will get me some paper? Do you understand me, little one? Could you give me some paper to write a little letter? Poor child; do you think she understands?”
Thus he got the better of both the protector and protected. Jeanie, who had been impervious to all else, blushed crimson at this doubt of her understanding; and so did Perfitt. “She’s no like an innocent or a natural. She’s been well brought up and well learned,” the Scotchman said, with natural and national indignation. “Indeed! I thought she was an unmistakable innocent,” said Arthur; and thus it came about that Clare’s note was written after all.
These days of mutual study had been very sweet to Clare. They had soothed her out of her agitation, without, however, stilling it altogether. She had acquired a new habit, and it was pleasant. While Arthur sat at the great table with the old MSS., which her father had partially arranged and prepared, she sat at the bureau, going over hosts of letters, which sometimes amused, sometimes interested her, but which were for the greater part quite unimportant--old bills and receipts and invitations, the broken fragments and relics of social life. If there had been any excitement in her mind to begin with--as it was natural there should be when she felt herself thus standing, as it were, on the edge of any secrets which her father might have had--it all died away on the first day. How innocent the life must have been of which only such harmless evidences remained! There were letters from some of his old friends--some with dead jokes in them, and dead pieces of news, embalmed and preserved, as if they were worth preserving. Clare took a pleasure in these, because it was to her father they were addressed; and she would look up now and then, and read a few words aloud to her fellow-student, who, on his side, had many things to communicate to her out of his MSS. Sometimes Arthur was obliged to get up and bring them to her that she might help him with a difficult sentence. Sometimes it was she who had to call him. They were such near relations, their interest in the family was almost the same, and it was very natural that they should constantly refer to and consult each other. Sometimes a momentary compunction crossed Clare’s mind when she thought of her brother. Would he like it? Would not he prefer to go over these papers himself, and be the first to discover his father’s secrets--if there were any secrets? But he would not care for them, Clare thought to herself. He confessed openly that his interest in the Ardens was limited; whereas her own interest was without limits. If she felt sometimes a more lively compunction still at the thought that she was absolutely foiling all Edgar’s precautions, and making his unwilling absence from home ridiculous by receiving thus, if not secretly, still without avowal, the visits of her cousin, her natural pride arose and put the whisper down. “Why should I give in to Edgar?” she asked herself. “It is my life, not his, that is concerned. It is my happiness that is concerned. I took care of myself before Edgar came; and why do I need his guardianship now?”