“Why will you always harp upon that string, Lilian? You know it wasn’t my fault. You would run away from every one and bury yourself in this beastly country among Dutchmen, and niggers, and all that sort of thing, where it has taken me years to find you; and now, when I have found you, you turn the cold shoulder on me. But, perhaps, you don’t believe that I have done this?” he concludes, dashing his tone of sorrowful reproach with a touch of irony.
“No. I do not.”
She looks him straight in the face, and there is a shade of contempt in the calm eyes. Why should the man tell her such a pitiful falsehood?
“Oh, you don’t?” he says, staring at her from the arm-chair in which he is lounging, fairly startled by her straightforwardness.
“No. But why talk about that?” she answers. Her hands nervously grasp the back of a chair as she stands, speaking in a low, rapid voice. “It is past, and there is an end of it. What I have to say to you now is of the present, and it is best said frankly and without reserve. You have come here and assumed a kind of possession over me, which I must ask you to discontinue. Of course I have no actual right to request you to drop your intimacy with the Paynes, but I have a moral right as a defenceless woman appealing to a gentleman, and therefore presumably an honourable man, to ask you to discontinue those very marked attentions by which you have made me conspicuous of late. Whatever has been is past and done with, nothing can alter that, and under the circumstances there can be no question even of intimacy between us. I do not wish to say anything unkind, but it would be better for us not to meet again, much better, believe me.”
All this time Truscott’s countenance has been wearing an expression of blank and well-feigned amazement.
“Better not to meet again? No question of intimacy between us? Good Heavens! Why, Lilian, what do you suppose I’ve come from one end of the world to the other for, then?”
“I don’t pretend to guess. But it must be even as I say, and I am sure you will agree with me that it is best so.”
“Indeed, I am sure I shall do nothing of the sort,” he cries. “You are only playing with me, Lilian, only doing this just to try me. You are; say you are, my darling. It is not kind of you after I have come far to find you.”
For all reply she shakes her head, sadly but firmly, and Truscott can see that every particle of faith she ever had in him is dead and buried.