"I am sorry about that," says he, bluntly, indicating with a nod of his head the departing shadows of the two who have just passed out. There are no fancies about Dysart. Nothing vague.
"Yes; it is a pity," says Joyce, hurriedly.
"More than that, I think."
"Something ought to be done," nervously.
"Yes," flushing hotly; "I know—I know what you mean"—she had meant nothing—"but it is so difficult to know what to do, and—I am only a cousin."
"Oh, I wasn't thinking of you. I wasn't, really," says she, a good deal shocked. "As you say, why should you speak, when——"
"There is Beauclerk," says Dysart, quickly, as if a little angry with somebody, but certainly not with her. "How can he stand by and see it?"
"Perhaps he doesn't see it," says she in a strange tone, her eyes on the marble flooring. It seems to herself that the words are forced from her. "Because—because he has——"
She brings her hands tightly together, so tightly that she reduces the feathers on the fan she is holding to their last gasp. Because she is now disappointed in him; because he has proved himself, perhaps, unstable, deceptive to the heart's core, is she to vilify, him? A thousand times no! That would be, indeed, to be base herself.
"Perhaps not," says Dysart, drily. In his secret heart this defence of his rival is detestable to him. Something in her whole manner when she came in from the garden had suggested to him the possibility that she had at last found him out. Dysart would have been puzzled to explain how Beauclerk was supposed to be "found out" or for what, but that he was liable to discovery at any moment on some count or counts unknown, was one of his Christian beliefs. "Perhaps not," says he. "And yet I cannot help thinking that a matter so open to all must be patent to him."