"I daresay I was unjust. I expect I exasperated him terribly. I used rather to like him—really, you know."
"You wouldn't now," said Ashley with a frown. The remark seemed to shew too much knowledge. He added, "I mean, would you?"
"Now? Oh, now—things are different. I should hate it now." She rose and stood opposite to him. "What's the matter?" she asked. "You're not happy to-day. Is anything wrong?"
He could not tell her what was wrong, how this man whom she had so unaccountably brought into her life seemed first to have degraded her and now to degrade him. To tell her that was to disclose all the story. He could throw off neither his disgust with himself nor his discontent with her. She had not asked him to borrow money and bribe Jack Fenning to go away; it was by no will of hers that he had become a party to the sordid little drama which Hazlewood's information enabled him to piece together. All she saw was that he was gloomy and that he did not make love to her. He should have come in a triumph of exultation that their companionship need not be broken. Her fears were ready with an explanation. Was Babba Flint right? Was the companionship unnatural, incapable of lasting, bound to be broken? She looked down on him, anger and entreaty fighting in her eyes.
"I believe you're sorry he didn't come," she said, in a low voice. "Do you want to get rid of me? You've only to say so, if that's what you want."
"I'm not sorry he didn't come," said Ashley, with a smile.
"Now you're amused. What at?"
"Oh, the way things happen! Among all the things I thought you might say to me, I never thought of your telling me that I was sorry he hadn't come." He raised his eyes to hers suddenly. "Do you know anything about what he does out there?" he asked.
"No; he never wrote, except that once. I don't want to know; it doesn't matter to me."
"One letter in five years—isn't it five?—isn't much."