“Look here,” he said, for the second time, but with a new and very different inflection, “don’t let us abuse each other any more. I couldn’t answer your letters. I didn’t know what to say, except to tell you that I was a cad and a beast, and I didn’t see much good in doing that. Evidently,” he added, with a bitterness that was at least half genuine, “it didn’t make much difference to you whether I did or not.”
She did not reply, except by a glance that was intended to express more than words could convey of her contempt for him, but somewhere in it, in spite of her, he felt a touch of reproach, and it was it that he answered as he said:
“Of course if you won’t believe me you won’t, and it don’t make much odds now whether you do or no; but I think if you knew how—” he stammered, and then went on with a rush—“how infernally I’ve suffered over the whole thing, you’d be rather sorry for me.”
Francie shaped her lips to a thin and tremulous smile of disdain, but her hands clutched each other under the book in her lap with the effort necessary to answer him. “Oh, yes, I am sorry for you; I’d be sorry for anyone that would behave the way you did,” she said, with a laugh that would have been more effective had it been steadier; “but I can’t say you look as if you wanted my pity.”
Hawkins turned abruptly away and walked towards the door, and then, as quickly, came back to her side.
“They’re coming across the lawn now,” he said; “before they come, don’t you think you could forgive me—or just say you do, anyhow. I did behave like a brute, but I never thought you’d have cared. You may say the worst things about me you can think of, if you’ll only tell me you forgive me.” His voice broke on the last words in a way that gave them irresistible conviction.
Francie glanced out of the window, and saw her husband and Charlotte slowly approaching the house. “Oh, very well,” she said proudly, without turning her head; “after all there’s nothing to forgive.”
CHAPTER XLV
Lambert and Francie were both very silent as they drove away from Gurthnamuckla. He was the first to speak.
“I’ve asked Charlotte to come over and stay with you while I’m away next week. I find I can’t get through the work in less than a fortnight, and I may be kept even longer than that, because I’ve got to go to Dublin.”