"Only, beginning to think it? Why, I always understood Dysart was immaculate—the 'couldn't err' sort of person one reads of but never sees. You have been slow, surely, to gauge his merits. I confess I have been even slower. I haven't gauged them yet. But then—Dysart and I were never much in sympathy with each other."
"No. One can understand that," says she.
"One can, naturally," with the utmost self-complaisance. "I confess, indeed," with a sudden slight burst of vindictiveness, "that I never liked Dysart; idiotic sort of fool in my estimation, self-opinionated like all fools, and deucedly impertinent in that silent way of his. I believe," with a contemptuous laugh, "he has given it as his opinion that there is very little to like in me either."
"Has he? We were saying just now he is always right," says Miss Kavanagh, absently, and in a tone so low that Beauclerk may be excused for scarcely believing his ears.
"Eh?" says he. But there is no answer, and presently both fall into a silent mood—Joyce because conversation is terrible to her, and he because anger is consuming him.
He had kept up a lively converse all through the earlier part of their drive, ignoring the depression that only too plainly was crushing upon his companion, with a view to putting an end to sentimentality of any sort. Her discomfort, her unhappiness, was as nothing to him—he thought only of himself. Few men, under the circumstances, would have so acted, for most men, in spite of all the old maids who so generously abuse them, are chivalrous and have kindly hearts; and indeed it is only a melancholy specimen here and there who will fail to feel pity for a woman in distress. Beauclerk is a "melancholy specimen."
CHAPTER XXV.
"Man, false man, smiling, destructive man."
"Who breathes, must suffer, and who thinks, most mourn; And he alone is bless'd who ne'er was born."