“Ah! you are like the rest,” I burst out bitterly, throwing her hand away from me, “ready to believe evil of a man whom you admit you have never known to be anything but kind and generous.”
“Don’t say that—it is not that I wish to believe evil, but I know men—a little, and my experience is that the best of them are terribly weak—and you are a very lovely girl. It is not impossible to think that he may have lost his head—”
“No, no, no!” I cried, “it is not so. I tell you I saw his eyes when he said good-bye to me. I will believe them against all the world.”
I felt that I had convinced her, too, even against her will—that was something. She never again chilled me with unbelief in my man.
But as to getting any advice out of her about my immediate course of action—it was simply hopeless. The poor woman’s unhappiness seemed to have dimmed her perception of what was going on round her in a place where she had lived for eight months. She knew of no place where I could stay. Did not even know if there were any hotels, or how many! I had to give her up as a guide and preceptor; but I was glad of the nervous pressure of her thin hand again before we slept, and something she said left my heart thrilling with happiness even while it ached for her.
“The men up here are all kind—but Major Kinsella’s kindness to me has been so different—there has never been any pity in it—you don’t know what that has meant to me—and his way with Rupert! He treats him as though he is still—Oh! perhaps you can understand?”
“As though he is still a man!”—that is what she would have said but her lips would not say it.
Poor soul! hers was the fag-end of a romance indeed!