to you if you would treat me
decently. But you say far more rude things than I do--in that soft
way, you know, that looks as if it were all silk and honey. I do think
you've awfully little consideration for human failings. If one goes
wrong in the least thing, even in one's spelling, you say something
that sounds as pleasant as possible, and all the same it transfixes
one just as you stick a pin through a beetle. You are very hard, you
are--mean with those who would like to be friends with you. When it's
mere strangers and cottagers and people of that sort, who don't care
a brass farthing about you, then I believe you're all gentleness
and kindness; but to your real friends the edge of a saw is smooth
compared to you."

"Am I so very harsh to my friends?" the young lady said in a resigned
way.

"Oh, well," he said, with some compunction, "I don't quite say that,
but you could be much more pleasant if you liked, and a little more
charitable to their faults. You know there are some who would give a
great deal to win your approval; and perhaps when you find fault they
are so disappointed that they think your words are sharper than you
mean; and sometimes they think you might give them credit for trying
to please you, at least."

"And who are these persons?" Wenna said, with another smile stealing
over her face.

"Oh," said he rather shamefacedly, "there's no need to explain
anything to you: you always see it before one need put it in words."

Well, perhaps it was in his manner or in the tone of his voice that
there was something which seemed at this moment to touch her deeply,
for she half turned and looked up at his face with her honest and
earnest eyes, and said to him kindly, "Yes, I do know without you
telling me; and it makes me happy to hear you talk so; and if I am
unjust to you, you must not think it intentional. And I shall try not
to be so in the future."

Mrs. Trelyon was regarding with a kindly look the two young people
walking on in front of her. Whatever pleased her son pleased her, and
she was glad to see him enjoy himself in so light-hearted a fashion.
These two were chatting to each other in the friendliest manner:
sometimes they stopped to pick up wild flowers: they were as two
children together under the fair and light summer skies.

They went down and along a narrow valley, until they suddenly stood
in front of the sea, the green waters of which were breaking in upon a
small and lonely creek.