id not
realise what Maud's feelings about Freddy Guthrie were. He came to the
conclusion eventually that Maud had told her about the beginnings of
their friendship; that his aunt supposed that he had tried to win
Maud's confidence, as he would have made friends with one of his young
men; and that she imagined that he had found that Maud's feeling for
him had developed in rather too confidential a line, as for a
father-confessor. He thought that Mrs. Graves had seen that Maud had
been disposed to adopt him as a kind of ethical director, and had
thought that he had been bored at finding a girl's friendship so much
more exacting than the friendship of a young man; and that she had been
exhorting him to be more brotherly and simple in his relations with
Maud, and to help her to the best of his ability. He imagined that Maud
had told Mrs. Graves that he had been advising her, and that she had
perhaps since told her of his chilly reception of her later
confidences. That was the situation he had created; and he felt with
what utter clumsiness he had handled it. His aunt, no doubt, thought
that he had been disturbed at finding how much more emotional a girl's
dependence upon an older man was than he had expected. But he felt that
when he could tell her the whole story, she would see that he could not
have acted otherwise. He had been so thrown off his balance by finding
how deeply he cared for Maud, that he had been simply unable to respond
to her advances. He ought to have had more control of himself. Mrs.
Graves had not suspected that he could have grown to care for a girl,
almost young enough to be his daughter, in so passionate a way. He
wished he could have explained the whole to her, but he was too deeply
wounded in mind to confess to his aunt how impulsive he had been. He
had now no doubt that there was an understanding between Maud and
Guthrie. Everyone else seemed to think so; and when once the affair was
happily launched, he would enjoy a mournful triumph, he thought, by
explaining to Mrs. Graves how considerately he had behaved, and how
painful a dilemma Maud would have been placed in if he had declared his
passion. Maud would have blamed herself; she might easily, with her
anxious sense of responsibility, have persuaded herself into accepting
him as a lover; and then a life-long penance might have begun for her.
He had, at what a cost, saved Maud from the chance of such a mistake.
It was a sad tangle; but when Maud w