«
    »Surely she has only to ask to be released? - to ask earnestly: if it is her
wish.«
    »You are mistaken.«
    »Why does she not make a confidant of her father?«
    »That she will have to do. She wished to spare him.«
    »He cannot be spared if she is to break the engagement.«
    »She thought of sparing him the annoyance. Now there's to be a tussle he
must share in it.«
    »Or she thought he might not side with her?«
    »She has not a single instinct of cunning. You judge her harshly.«
    »She moved me on the walk out. Coming home I felt differently.«
    Vernon glanced at Colonel De Craye.
    »She wants good guidance,« continued Lætitia.
    »She has not an idea of treachery.«
    »You think so? It may be true. But she seems one born devoid of patience,
easily made reckless. There is a wildness ... I judge by her way of speaking;
that at least appeared sincere. She does not practise concealment. He will
naturally find it almost incredible. The change in her, so sudden, so wayward,
is unintelligible to me. To me it is the conduct of a creature untamed. He may
hold her to her word and be justified.«
    »Let him look out if he does!«
    »Is not that harsher than anything I have said of her?«
    »I'm not appointed to praise her. I fancy I read the case; and it's a case
of opposition of temperaments. We never can tell the person quite suited to us;
it strikes us in a flash.«
    »That they are not suited to us? Oh, no; that comes by degrees.«
    »Yes, but the accumulation of evidence, or sentience, if you like, is
combustible; we don't command the spark: it may be late in falling. And you
argue in her favour. Consider her as a generous and impulsive girl, outwearied
at last.«
    »By what?«
    »By anything; by his loftiness, if you like. He flies too high for her, we
will say.«
    »Sir Willoughby an eagle?«
    »She may be tired of his eyrie.«
    The sound of the word in Vernon's mouth smote on a consciousness she had of
his full grasp of Sir Willoughby, and her own timid knowledge, though he was not
a man who played on words.
    If he had eased