“You! a lady!”
“Ah, but be honest with me! Lady or not, what has that to do with it? We are two women—that’s where it all started, and we’re kept to that.”
Lizzie bent her brows. “Yes, you are right,” she admitted.
“And,” Honoria pursued eagerly, “if I come here to sue you for the truth—it is you who force me.”
“I?”
“By what you said that night, when George—when my husband—was drowned; when you cursed me. ‘A son’s a son,’ you said, ‘though he was your man.’”
“Did I say that?” Lizzie seemed to muse over the words. “You have suffered?” she asked.
“Yes, I have suffered.”
“Ah, if I thought so! ... But you have not. You are a hypocrite, Mrs. Vyell; and you are trying to cheat me now. You come here not to end that suffering, but to force a word from me that’ll put joy and hope into you; that you’ll go home hugging to your heart. Oh, I know you!”
“You do not.”