Mina had her doubts about that—and would have been sorry not to have them. The interest that had threatened to vanish from her life with Addie Tristram's death and Harry's departure was revived. She sat looking at the agitated girl in a pleasant suspense. Cecily took up Southend's letter again and smoothed it thoughtfully. "What should you think Harry must feel about me?" she asked, with a nearer approach to the calm which she had promised; but it seemed the quiet of despair.
Here Mina had her theory ready and advanced it with confidence.
"I expect he hates you. You see he did what he did in a moment of excitement: he must have been wrought up by something—something quite unusual with him. You brought it about somehow."
"Yes, I know I did. Do you suppose I haven't thought about that?"
"There's sure to have been a reaction," pursued the sage Imp. "He'll have got back to his ordinary state of mind, and in that he loved Blent above everything. And the more he loves Blent, and the sorrier he is for having given it up, the less he'll like you, of course."
"You think he's sorry?"
"When I've done anything on an impulse like that, I'm always sorry." Mina spoke from a tolerably large experience of impulses and their results; a very recent example had been the impulse of temper which made her drop hints to the Major about Harry's right to be Tristram of Blent.
"Yes, then he would hate me," Cecily concluded. "And how she'd hate me!" she cried the next instant, pointing at Addie Tristram's picture.
About that at least there was no doubt in Mina's mind. She nodded emphatically.