It proves valueless. He passes it over as though it were of no consequence whatever.
‘I don’t know what to say to you,’ says he, struggling with his passionate rage, and grief, and shame. ‘I hardly know how to condemn you strongly enough. I wish to God you were not a woman, and then I should know what to do. This girl you have so insulted is a girl as good and pure as the best girl you have ever met, and yet you have gone down there’—pointing in the direction of the Cottage—‘and deliberately hurt and wounded her. I wonder you had the courage to do it. Are you’—growing now furious—‘a fool that you couldn’t see how sweet and gentle and innocent she is?’
‘Is it your intercourse with this sweet and gentle and innocent girl that has made you so extremely rude?’ asks his aunt in her low, well-bred voice. ‘If so, I consider I have done an extra duty by my visit to her. It may have results. Your disinheritance by Shangarry, for example, is sure to have an effect upon her. I am afraid, after all, it is you who are the fool. In the meantime, Paul, I can quite see that your infatuation for an extremely ordinary sort of girl has blinded you to her defects. Some of these people, I am told, quite study our manners nowadays; but she lacks distinction of any sort. That you happen to be in love with her at present of course prevents your seeing these faults.’
‘You seem so remarkably well up in the affair,’ says Wyndham, who could now have cheerfully strangled her, ‘that I suppose it will be quite superfluous to tell you that love has no voice in the matter. I am not in love with her, and she most positively is not in love with me.’
Mrs. Prior makes a contemptuous movement of her thin shoulders.
‘So very old,’ says she. ‘Do you suppose, my dear Paul, with the stake you have in view, that I expected you to say the truth—to tell me that you had fallen violently in love with this little paltry creature, who has come out of no one knows where, except yourself, to go back to no one knows where when you are tired of her?’
‘Look here,’ says Wyndham, driven beyond all courtesy by some feeling that he can hardly explain, ‘I think you have the worst mind of any woman I have ever met. I see now that it is useless to try to convince you; but remember—remember always’—he makes a distinct pause, as if on purpose, as if to fasten the words on her mind—‘what I say to you now—that anyone who calls Ella Moore anything less than the best woman on earth—lies!’
‘Your infatuation has gone deep,’ says Mrs. Prior. ‘Few men would speak so strongly in favour of the virtue of their—friends.’
‘I understand your hideous hint,’ says Wyndham, who has now grown cold and collected. ‘You are a woman, and it is hard to tell a woman that she lies. But if you were a man, I shouldn’t hesitate about it.’
‘As I tell you, she has not improved your manners,’ says Mrs. Prior, with a bitter smile. She has not dreamt the affair would take this turn. She has believed that Paul, through dread of Shangarry’s displeasure, would at the most have made light of the matter, have parried the attack, and perhaps have sworn fresh allegiance to Josephine on the head of it. That he should defend this ‘creature’ and defy her, his aunt, because of her—— The situation has become strained beyond bearing.