Joyce flushed a little deeper, but she did not answer a word to my cruel and unjust accusations; she was always patient and gentle.
"What did he say?" she asked, presently.
"What could he say?" I said, scornfully. "He thanks me for writing; but I ask you how much he can have cared for my writing when the person whom he supposed loved him didn't care to know whether he was dead or alive?"
"That's nonsense, Meg," said Joyce, quietly. "He knew very well that I cared; he knew very well why I didn't write. Why should he expect me to break my word?"
"Why?" cried I, vehemently. "Because if you had had a grain of feeling in you, you must have broken your word; you couldn't have helped yourself. But you haven't a grain of feeling in you. You are as cold as ice. People might love you till they burned themselves up for loving you, but they would never get a spark to fly out of you in return. I suppose you think you loved Frank. Why else should you have said you would marry him? Was it because he was a gentleman, and you were only a farmer's daughter? No; I never imagined that," I added, confidently, seeing that she made a movement of horror. "You're too much of a Maliphant. It must have been because you loved him as much as you can love anybody. And you'll be faithful to him—oh yes, you're too proud to be fickle! You'll hold on silently to the end, just as you said you would hold on! But, good gracious me, does it never occur to you to think that perhaps such milk-and-water stuff might put a man out of heart? He may wait and wait for the ice to melt, but, upon my word, I don't think it would be so very astonishing if, at last, the fire went out with the waiting!"
I stopped, panting, and waited for what she would say. She lifted her eyes to my face—her dark-blue limpid eyes; there was no anger in them, only surprise and distress.
"Oh, Meg," she said, sadly, "do you know that I think you sometimes make up things in your own mind as you want them to be, and then you're angry because they're not like that. Can't you be different?"
"No," said I; "of course I can't be different any more than you can be different. We've got to make the best of one another as we are."
"Well, then, let's make the best of one another, Meg," said Joyce, gently. "We have always done it before, let us do it now."