"Very odd!" said Fulvia.
"Odd! It's inexplicable."
"Things do disappear unaccountably sometimes."
"No doubt. But just listen. It's as plain as a pikestaff, if you'll give your mind to it for a minute. The postscripts went two and two, so to speak, in a double exchange. Ethel's and Daisy's were exchanged. Daisy sent hers to Ethel, and Ethel returned the other to me. Either plan open, of course. That's Ethel and Daisy disposed of. You and Nigel remain. You see! Now your postscript went to Nigel, and was returned to you. The fair inference is that Nigel's went to you, and that you ought to have returned it to him. Eh? You see, eh?"
Fulvia had not expected this. She had reckoned on a good deal of confusion. Mr. Carden-Cox was growing excited, but his recollections were clear. Fulvia kept perfectly still, conscious of an internal trembling, yet conscious that it did not show. One cheek burnt and the other was white, as she remarked—
"Inferences are often great nonsense."
"Tut, tut!" once more. "I don't want any beating about the bush. You girls are queer creatures; no knowing what you'll do next, or why you do it. Tell me plainly, did you have Nigel's postscript, or did you not? Eh?"
Fulvia had known that the question must come. She had seen it approaching, as an inevitable thing, even while trying to stave it off. Her mind was not so much in a state of turmoil as in a state of blank, unable to think. She did not reason upon the right and wrong of the question. Wrong-doing had landed her in this difficulty; and the one way out of it seemed to her too hard to be taken. In that moment she had the choice. The straightforward and painful path lay one way; the crooked and seemingly easy path lay the other way.
If she had but taken the right path, regardless of consequences! At the worst, the consequences of well-doing, even when painful, can never be so hard to bear as the consequences of ill-doing. But to Fulvia it almost appeared that she had no choice. The upward step was in her eyes so entirely impossible that the other step became a necessity.
Perhaps in a certain sense it was almost impossible. Fulvia stood alone at the junction of these two paths, unaided, unadvised. She might have had Heavenly counsel, Heavenly strength; but she did not ask for them. What wonder that by herself she was weak—the weaker for having been already overcome? All through the dialogue she had not made up her mind what to do. She had only allowed herself to drift; and nothing is more certain to bring a vessel to disaster than leaving it to drift.