'Nay, think what he is yourself. Or rather look here,' and he took out a part of a letter from Ethel, and laid it before her.
'As to papa not guessing your object,' she said, 'that was a vain delusion if you ever entertained it, so you must not mind my having explained. He said if he had been you, it was just what he should have done himself, and he is quite ready to throw his heart into it if you will only trust to his kindness. I do so want you really to try what that is.'
'And you came for this,' faltered Averil, leaning back, almost overcome.
'I did not come meaning to hurry the subject on you. I hoped to have induced Henry to have brought you all home, and then, when I had done my best to efface the recollection of that unpardonable behaviour, to have tried whether you could look on me differently.'
'I don't like you to say that,' said Averil, simply but earnestly; 'I have felt over and over again how wrong I was—how ungrateful—to have utterly missed all the nobleness and generosity of your behaviour, and answered in that unjust, ill-tempered way.'
'Nothing was ever more deserved,' he answered; 'I have hated myself ever since, and I hope I am not as obnoxious now.'
'It was I!' she said; 'I have lived every bit of the winter over again, and seen that I was always ready to be offended, and somehow I could not help caring so much for what you said, that lesser things from you hurt and cut as other people's did not.'
'Do you know what that proves?' said Tom, with an arch subsmile lighting on his eyes and mouth; and as a glow awoke on her pale cheek, he added, 'and won't you believe, too, that my propensity to "contemptuous irony" was all from my instinctive fear of what you could do to me!'
'Oh, don't repeat that! I have been so bitterly ashamed of it!'
'I am sure I have.'