Here Hilda gave a little gasp.
“She doesn’t love him,” she cried. Odd considered her with a disturbed look.
“You mustn’t say that, you know. I fancy she does—love him.”
“She did it desperately after you had failed her; after I had robbed her.”
Odd was too conscious of the possibility of a subtle half-truth in this to assert the bold unvarnished whole truth of a negative.
Hilda’s loyalty lent a dignity to Katharine’s most doubtful motives, a dignity that Katherine would probably contemplate with surprise, but accept with philosophic pleasure.
Had Hilda indeed robbed her unwittingly? Had he failed her long before her deliberate breach of faith? He had, she said, shown his love for Hilda, and would she have turned to Lord Allan’s more facile contentment had she been sure of Peter’s?
Delicate problem, without doubt. His mind dwelt on its vexatious tragic-comic aspect, while he stared almost absently at Hilda.
Certainly his disloyalty had been unintentional, guiltless of plot or falsehood; and Katherine’s was intentional, deceitful, ignoble. It would be possible to shock every chord of honor in Hilda with the bold announcement that Katherine had been engaged when she came to Paris, and that her cruel triumph had been won under a lying standard.
And that shock might shatter forever, not the sense of personal wrong-doing, but all responsibility towards one so base, all that brooding consciousness of having spoiled another’s life. Katherine had abandoned the position, and poor Hilda had merely stumbled on its vacant lie.