“I’m illegitimate. Legally speaking, that is, I’ve been turned out of Cadover. I haven’t a penny. I—”
“There is no occasion to inflict the details.” Her face, which had been an even brown, began to flush slowly in the centre of the cheeks. The colour spread till all that he saw of her was suffused, and she turned away. He thought he had shocked her, and so did she. Neither knew that the body can be insincere and express not the emotions we feel but those that we should like to feel. In reality she was quite calm, and her dislike of him had nothing emotional in it as yet.
“You see—” he began. He was determined to tell the fidgety story, for the sooner it was over the sooner they would have something to eat. Delicacy he lacked, and his sympathies were limited. But such as they were, they rang true: he put no decorous phantom between him and his desires.
“I do see. I have seen for two years.” She sat down at the head of the table, where there was another ink-pot. Into this she dipped a pen. “I have seen everything, Mr. Wonham—who you are, how you have behaved at Cadover, how you must have treated Mrs. Failing yesterday; and now”—her voice became very grave—“I see why you have come here, penniless. Before you speak, we know what you will say.”
His mouth fell open, and he laughed so merrily that it might have given her a warning. But she was thinking how to follow up her first success. “And I thought I was bringing tremendous news!” he cried. “I only twisted it out of Mrs. Failing last night. And Rickie knows too?”
“We have known for two years.”
“But come, by the bye,—if you’ve known for two years, how is it you didn’t—” The laugh died out of his eyes. “You aren’t ashamed?” he asked, half rising from his chair. “You aren’t like the man towards Andover?”
“Please, please sit down,” said Agnes, in the even tones she used when speaking to the servants; “let us not discuss side issues. I am a horribly direct person, Mr. Wonham. I go always straight to the point.” She opened a chequebook. “I am afraid I shall shock you. For how much?”
He was not attending.
“There is the paper we suggest you shall sign.” She pushed towards him a pseudo-legal document, just composed by Herbert.