Marion was silent.
“You holy devil!” I said. “You astute unconscionable devil!”
She rose in great agitation.
“You do not understand, Felix.”
“What am I to understand? That this poor unhappy girl was to be sacrificed to a misapprehension rather than risk the truth which would have saved her, and that, for the sake of that misapprehension, I, who might have righted it, was to remain uninformed?”
“It would not have saved her. When he came to hear it, which he did at last—God knows how!—his fury was implacable against every instrument in his deception.”
“Poor ruined child! And this was your return to her for her devoted self-sacrifice? Why did he not kill you?”
“I don’t know. I had an influence over him: I dared him to his face; and for some reason he respected me.”
“I don’t doubt it—he recognised in you his superior; his arch-fiend. And you dare to accuse me—me, of an abuse of trust. Wasn’t that in the reckoning? Didn’t you know it was? Her virtue, like her life, was only a pawn in the game you were playing. I can see that clearly enough now. All, everything must be sacrificed to your damned emergency—a child of the people rather than a child of the aristocracy. O, you are the very saint of snobs!”
She was controlling herself. She had made a tremendous effort, and stood facing me, flushed but resolute.