“I know better,—you do think so. And I'll tell you more; what makes you so keenly alive to her change—perfidy, you would like to call it—is this, that you have gone through that state of the disease yourself.”
“I don't understand you.”
“Well, you shall. The lovely Alice—isn't that the name?”
Tony nodded.
“The lovely Alice got your own heart only, at second hand. You used to be in love with the little girl that was governess at Richmond.”
“Not a word of it true,—nothing of the kind,” broke out Tony, fiercely. “Dolly and I were brother and sister,—we always said we were.”
“What does that signify? I tried the brother-and-sister dodge, and I know what it cost me when she married Maccleston;” and Skeffy here threw his cigar into the sea, as though an emblem of his shipwrecked destiny. “Mind me well, Butler,” said he, at last; “I did not say that you ever told your heart you loved her; but she knew it, take my word for it. She knew, and in the knowing it was the attraction that drew you on.”
“But I was not drawn on.”
“Don't tell me, sir. Answer me just this: Did any man ever know the hour, or even the day, that he caught a fever? Could he go back in memory, and say, it was on Tuesday last, at a quarter to three, that my pulse rose, my respiration grew shorter, and my temples began to throb? So it is with love, the most malignant of all fevers. All this time that you and What's-her-name were playing brother and sister so innocently, your hearts were learning to feel in unison,—just as two pendulums in the same room acquire the same beat and swing together. You 've heard that?”
“I may; but you are all wrong about Dolly.”