“So you are going to make friends with Angela,” Maurice observed lightly, when the servant had gone.
“Felicia has spoken to you, I infer,” said Mr. Merrick, sipping his soup in slow and regular spoonfuls. His father-in-law’s aggressively noisy manner of imbibing soup had long been a thorn in the flesh to Maurice. It was peculiarly irritating to-night. He could but hold Mr. Merrick responsible for all the vexatious situation. Silly, gullible old fool! He could almost have uttered the words as the sibilant mouthfuls succeeded one another. How obvious, in looking at him, that Angela could only have captured him as a tool. To think that, again cast the danger-signal on the situation, made it more than vexatious. Maurice forcibly quieted his mental comments, since to think his father-in-law a silly old fool roused again his worst suspicions of Angela.
“Naturally, she has spoken to me,” he said.
“I trust that you do not share her morbid hatred.”
“I don’t know about a morbid hatred,” Maurice answered, controlling his impatience with the more success now that the soup was done. “I see a very normal antagonism of temperament. Angela is all artificiality, and Felicia all reality; but I do think,” he added, “that Felicia has the defects of her qualities. She scorns artificiality too quickly. Her scorns outshoot the mark. I don’t think that poor Angela, with all her attitudinising, meant any harm this afternoon. Why should she? It was, I own, rather hard on her to come to beg for forgiveness, and to have Felicia refuse to forgive her.”
Mr. Merrick had not dared openly to express his angers and grievances, for then he must reveal their source, and that he felt to be inadvisable; but the latent angers only awaited their opportunity.
“Upon my word! Forgiveness for what?” he demanded.
Maurice recoiled as Angela that afternoon had recoiled. He had intended a cheery, mending talk, and he had not intended that it should lead him to this. He could not tell Mr. Merrick the cause of Angela’s visit—that he had jested with her over the very article he had urged him to publish.
“I don’t quite know what happened,” he said, searching his mind for a safe clue. “Felicia, as you know, didn’t like that article of yours; Angela spoke to her about it—it was in the summer—there was some misunderstanding; Felicia resented her sympathy.”
Matters were becoming clear, luridly clear, to Mr. Merrick’s mind, and Angela gained all that Felicia lost. “Indeed,” he said, ominously, “she criticizes her own father and resents the frank and more intelligent criticism of a friend.”