“If I can only appear to justify my own indecent persistence in remaining on to help,” I said stiffly, “I shall feel satisfied.”
I could not forbear the little thrust: that wounding remark of his had never ceased to rankle in me.
“Well, I asked for it,” he said, with a flushed smile. “But don’t nurse a grudge any longer. I was hardly accountable for what I said in those days: a man hardly is, you know, when he’s on the rack.”
“O! I forgive you,” I answered. “There’s a virtue sometimes in pretending to a thick skin——” and we parted on good terms.
My journey to London was arranged for the morrow after the interview. I had one of my passages with Audrey before going. I don’t know what particular prejudice it was the girl cherished against me, but she would never let us be friends. I saw scarcely anything of her in these days, and when we did meet she would hardly speak to me. I could have wished even to propitiate her, because it was plain enough to me how the poor thing was suffering. Her pride and her affections—both of which, I think, were really deep-seated—were cruelly involved in the disgrace befallen them. They found some little compensation, perhaps, in the improved relations established between her father and herself. Circumstances had brought these two into closer and more sympathetic kinship; it was as if they had discovered between them a father and a daughter; and so far poor Hugo’s catastrophe had wrought good. But still the girl’s loneliness of heart was an evident thing. Pathetically grateful as she might be for the change in her father’s attitude towards her, she could never get nearer to that despotic nature than its own limitations would permit.
“You are pining for your Baron, I suppose,” I said on this day, goaded at last to speak by her insufferable manner towards me. The taunt was effective, at least, in opening her mouth.
“You are always hinting unpleasant things about the Baron, Mr. Bickerdike,” she answered, turning sharply on me. “Don’t you think it a little mean to be continually slandering him in that underhand way?”
I saw it was still to be battle, and prepared my guard.
“That is your perverse way of looking at it, Audrey,” I answered quietly. “From my point of view, it is just trying to help my friends.”
“By maligning them to their enemies?” she answered. “I suppose that was why you confided to Sergeant Ridgway all you knew about Hugh’s affairs?”