Trix was certainly no more than partly responsible for any trouble in which Mr. Chance's dealings might land him; but we cannot attend to our own faults in the very hour of preaching to others. Chance seemed to himself a most ill-used man; he had no doubt that but for Trix Trevalla he would have followed an undeviatingly straight path in public and private morality.
'Well, what have you got to say?' he demanded roughly, almost brutally.
'I've nothing to say while you speak like that.'
'Didn't you lead me to suppose you liked me?'
'I did like you.'
'Stuff! You know what I mean. When I helped you—when I introduced Fricker to you—was that only friendship? You knew better. And at that time I was good enough for you. I'm not good enough for you now. So I'm kicked out with Fricker! It's a precious dangerous game you play, Trix.'
'Don't call me Trix!'
'I might call you worse than that, and not do you any wrong.'
Among the temporal punishments of sin and folly there is perhaps none harder to bear than the necessity of accepting rebuke from unworthy lips, of feeling ourselves made inferior by our own acts to those towards whom we really (of this we are clear) stand in a position of natural superiority. Their fortuitous advantage is the most unpleasant result of our little slips. Trix realised the truth of these reflections as she listened to Beaufort Chance. Once again the scheme of life with which she had started in London seemed to have something very wrong with it.
'I—I'm sorry if I made you——' she began in a stammering way.