"Of course you are friends. She only wanted to have somebody to tell her that somebody had maligned you. It mattered not much who it was. She was ready to believe any one who would say a good word for you. Perhaps I wasn't just the person to do it, but I believe even I was sufficient to serve the turn."
"Did you say a good word for me?"
"Well; no;" replied Mrs. Hurtle. "I will not boast that I did. I do not want to tell you fibs at our last meeting. I said nothing good of you. What could I say of good? But I told her what was quite as serviceable to you as though I had sung your virtues by the hour without ceasing. I explained to her how very badly you had behaved to me. I let her know that from the moment you had seen her, you had thrown me to the winds."
"It was not so, my friend."
"What did that matter? One does not scruple a lie for a friend, you know! I could not go into all the little details of your perfidies. I could not make her understand during one short and rather agonizing interview how you had allowed yourself to be talked out of your love for me by English propriety even before you had seen her beautiful eyes. There was no reason why I should tell her all my disgrace,—anxious as I was to be of service. Besides, as I put it, she was sure to be better pleased. But I did tell her how unwillingly you had spared me an hour of your company;—what a trouble I had been to you;—how you would have shirked me if you could!"
"Winifrid, that is untrue."
"That wretched journey to Lowestoft was the great crime. Mr. Roger Carbury, who I own is poison to me—"
"You do not know him."
"Knowing him or not I choose to have my own opinion, sir. I say that he is poison to me, and I say that he had so stuffed her mind with the flagrant sin of that journey, with the peculiar wickedness of our having lived for two nights under the same roof, with the awful fact that we had travelled together in the same carriage, till that had become the one stumbling block on your path to happiness."
"He never said a word to her of our being there."