'I remember! I thought you had all got into intimacies that were for nobody's good, and I still think it was foolish. I know it has done for me! Well,' hastily catching up this last admission, as if it had dropped out at unawares, 'you think I made myself disagreeable?'
'On principle.'
'Ah! then you would not wonder at what she said—that she had never seen anything in me but contemptuous irony.'
'I think, sometimes feeling that you were satirical, she took all your courtesy for irony—whatever you meant. I have heard other people say the same. But when—was this on the day—the day you went to remonstrate?'
'Yes. I declare to you, Ethel, that I had no conception of what I was going to do! I never dreamt that I was in for it. I knew she was—was attractive—and that made me hate to see Harry with her, and I could not bear her being carried off to this horrible place—but as to myself, I never thought of it till I saw her—white and broken—' and then came that old action Ethel knew so well in her father, of clearing the dew from the glasses, and his voice was half sob, 'and with no creature but that selfish brother to take care of her. I couldn't help it, Ethel—no one could—and this—this was her answer. I don't wonder. I had been a supercilious prig, and I ought to have known better than to think I could comfort her.'
'I think the remembrance must have comforted her since.'
'What—what, has she said anything?'
'Oh no, she could not, you know. But I am sure, if it did anger her at the moment, there must have been comfort in recollecting that even such a terrible trouble had not alienated you. And now—'
'Now that's just what I don't want! I don't want to stalk in and say here's the hero of romance that has saved your brother! I want to get her home, and show her that I can be civil without being satirical, and then, perhaps, she would forgive me.'
'Forgive you—'