“Turned out?” repeated Angela, with an impersonal vagueness, quite as if it had been a stray dog of which they were speaking.
Mr. Merrick’s suspicion grew past alarm to resentment, and resentment cowered under a more sturdy manner of pathos as of one who faced fate’s unjust bolts with erect bearing and unconquerable gaze. “Our friendship, it seems, is unforgiveable. It was a choice between it and them. I couldn’t submit to such intolerable dictation.”
Angela felt as if, after a long drowning swoon under water, she were being resuscitated to painful life by blows upon her head. She, so blameless, having done no wrong except love with a fatal fidelity; she, crushed, humiliated, was to feel another lash. Even her kindness to this pompous fool was to be made a scourge for her.
Mr. Merrick saw that she grew more white as, with folded arms, she drooped her head and looked up at him from sombre brows. “They can’t forgive you that? They hate me so much?”
“Apparently,” said Mr. Merrick, his growing sense of the indignity of his situation giving him a deeper gloom of manner. “The crisis was brought about by my venturing to warn Maurice on the subject you have spoken of.”
“And you told him who had warned you? I see.”
Mr. Merrick took hasty refuge before the cutting quality of her voice. “He sprang at the conclusion and defied me to deny that it was you. He was outrageous. I have had to defend you as well as myself, Lady Angela.”
“He accused me of falseness?”
“Insolently.” It was well that she should know how much he had had to champion her. “I don’t care to recall the terms.” But Mr. Merrick was feeling an odd satisfaction in recalling them. His heart, before this rebuffing friend, before her icy eyes and icy voice, was calling out for Felicia—Felicia whom he had lost because of this,—did she not suggest something snake-like? His wounded affection, his wounded vanity, longed for such comfort as Felicia alone could give. It would be well could he believe Lady Angela—if not a liar, at least a presumptuous busy-body. His first impressions of her were flooding his mind again.
“I could not forgive the insolence,” he said, “although I can conceive it possible that you and I have been to a certain extent mistaken. Such a mistake must naturally wound Maurice and Felicia.”