She would not have dared to ask him, for
all the frank tenderness of their companionship. On that subject Dr.
Derwent had no word to say, no hint to let fall. She knew only that,
in speaking of her they had lost, his voice would still falter; she
knew that he always came into this churchyard alone, and was silent,
troubled, for hours after the visit. Instinctively, too, she
understood that, though her father might almost be called a young
man, and had abounding vitality, no second wife would ever obscure
to him that sacred memory. It was one of the many grounds she had
for admiring as much as she loved him. His loyalty stirred her
heart, coloured her view of life.
The ladies had some little apprehension that their young relative,
fresh from contact with a many-sided world, might feel a dulness in
their life and their interests; but nothing of the sort entered
Irene's mind. She was intelligent enough to appreciate the
superiority of these quiet sisters to all but the very best of the
acquaintances she had made in London or abroad, and modest enough to
see in their entire refinement a correction of the excessive
_sans-gene_ to which society tempted her. They were behind the times
only in the sense of escaping, by seclusion, those modern tendencies
which vulgarise. An excellent library of their own supplied them
with the essentials of culture, and one or two periodicals kept them
acquainted with all that was worth knowing in the activity of the
day.
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