“You make me feel like a felon,” Maurice murmured.
“It must be, then, some wrong in yourself to make you feel that,” Angela returned quietly; “the retaliating attitude is not mine, Maurice.” Then, as the talk about them cloaked them less, “What have you and Mrs. Wynne been doing lately? I have been so sorry to have seen so little of her—so sorry that you could never come when I asked you. I have asked you twice this spring, you know. She is prettier than ever”—Angela leaned forward to look down the table—“and so Geoffrey evidently finds her. Is Geoffrey more fortunate than I? Does he see much of her?”
Though knowing Angela well, Maurice was not capable of suspecting her of treacherous little hints and warnings. “Not much,” he answered; “he drops in to tea now and then. He really is busy, you know,” Maurice added, “so we are not very fortunate in seeing him often, either.”
“Geoffrey, without knowing it, is becoming more anxious for place than for power,” said Angela, “and not only as a means to power but as an end in itself. It would be a rather black outlook for him, wouldn’t it, if the Government were to go out? I suppose he could fall back on the Bar.”
She spoke with a musing vagueness. Maurice was not looking at her, and her eyes were on his charming profile, on the quick colour that flamed again in his cheek. She suspected herself now of cruelty, knowing that her love sought ease in cruelty. His dear, enchanting profile! She looked at it with a turn of her sick heart, even while speaking the cruel, vague words.
“Dear Maurice!” she murmured, “I didn’t mean that! Indeed, I forgot for a moment why office must be so important to him. There need be no pain in it for you—beyond the blundering frankness of my reference to what you let me know;—I can’t get over that habit of frankness with you. But Geoffrey chose to so shackle his career.”
“He knows,” Maurice stammered, “that if he were to feel a shackle I would abandon——.”
“Ah, but would you?” said Angela as he paused. “Though that is why, for your sake, more than his—I know your sensitiveness—that is why, dear friend, I had hoped that this year would be for you an incentive to energy rather than lethargy. You are more shackled than he is—I want to see you free. I wish—I wish,” she smiled with quite her old sweet lightness now, “you would let me try to help you. Can I inspire no longer?”
But Maurice could feel no sweetness, or, if sweetness there were, it was to him poisonous. Had he, indeed, opened himself to this? He could find no words.
“Dear Maurice, how you distrust me,” she murmured, “how you forget that such a friend as I know myself to be takes it too much for granted, perhaps, that she has all her old rights; the right to be true; the right to help. Forgive me, I have hurt you, I see. I couldn’t hurt you if you trusted me. Is Mr. Merrick, here, too? Ah, yes, I see. I read to-day his article on ‘Credulity.’”