“It’s very decent of you to take it so well,” said the puzzled captain. “I was afraid that I might have unwittingly injured her in your mind.”
“No, oh no; don’t think that. There was no hypocrisy about Lady Victoria, I can assure you. She didn’t pretend to be in love with me, and I didn’t pretend to be in love with her.”
“You asked her to marry you,” observed the other, in a tone of remonstrance.
“I know; I did it to please my constituents, as she was aware. A public man has to do that sort of thing.”
“Surely you expected her to care for you in time?”
“No; I merely expected her to canvass for me.”
Mauleverer began to feel baffled by this cynical indifference.
“You seem to take a very curious tone,” he said, after a moment. “Of course, you understand that, whatever feeling I may have had for her in the past, I shall never think of her again except as a cousin.”
In spite of his own inward trouble, Hammond could not resist a smile at the honest captain’s efforts to plead against himself. He gave him an amused glance as he retorted:
“I am afraid that is rather ambiguous. I have known cousins who were very much attached to each other.”