She plants this barb with joy. The telling of a lie more or less has never troubled her during her life.
‘The girl he loves!’ Ella’s voice as she repeats the words sounds dull and monotonous. She is quite ghastly now, and she has laid her hand on the back of a garden-chair to steady herself.
‘Yes. The girl he has always meant to marry!’ She lays great stress on the last word. That ought to tell. ‘Whom he meant to marry until your—fascinations’—she throws detestable meaning into her speech, base as it is detestable—‘alienated him—for the moment!’
All at once Ella recovers herself.
‘Oh, you are wrong, wrong!’ cries she vehemently. ‘Somebody has been telling you what is not true, what is not the case! Mr. Wyndham does not—does not’—she trembles violently—‘love me. Not me—anyone but me. Oh! who could have said such a thing? Believe me, do believe me’—she comes forward, holding out her hands imploringly—‘when I tell you that I am the last girl in the world he would fall in love with. If you know this young lady he loves, go back to her, I implore you, and tell her it is all untrue—that he loves her, and her only, and that all she has heard to the contrary is not worth one thought. Oh, madam! If he should be hurt through me!... After all his goodness to me! Oh ... go ... go to her and tell her what I say!’
She stops, and covers her face suddenly with her hands. She is not crying, however. Tears are far from her eyes. But the misery of death has swept over her soul.
Mrs. Prior gives way to a low laugh.
‘Why didn’t you go on the stage?’ she says. ‘You would have made even a better living there. But perhaps you have only just come off it?’
The girl lets her hand drop to her sides, and turns passionately upon her.
‘Why won’t you believe me?’ cries she, with sudden wild vehemence. ‘What have I done that you should disbelieve my word?’ Her eyes are bright with grief and the eager desire that is consuming her to make things straight for Wyndham and the girl he loves. Wyndham, who has been so good to her, who has brought her out of such deep waters! To hurt him—to injure him: the very thought is unbearable. She has involuntarily—unknowingly—drawn up her svelte and slender body to its fullest height, and with a courage that few women could have found under circumstances so poignant, so filled with agonized memory, and with yet another feeling that perhaps is bitterest of all (though hardly known), she looks full at her tormentor.