“Oh! I was so frightened at the wasp, and I wouldn’t let on!”
“I wonder why you’re always so unfriendly with me now,” began Lambert suddenly, fixing his eyes upon her; “there was once on a time when we were great friends, and you used to write to me, and you’d say you were glad to see me when I went up to town, but now you’re so set up with your Dysarts and your officers that you don’t think your old friends worth talking to.”
“Oh!” Francie sat up and faced her accuser valiantly, but with an inwardly-stricken conscience. “You know that’s a dirty, black lie!”
“I came over here this afternoon,” pursued Lambert, “very anxious about you, and wanting to tell you how sorry I was, and how I accused myself for what had happened—and how am I treated? You won’t so much as take the trouble to speak to me. I suppose if I was one of your swell new friends—Christopher Dysart, for instance, who you are looking out for so hard—it would be a very different story.”
By the time this indictment was delivered, Francie’s face had more colour in it than it had known for some days; she kept her eyes on the ground and said nothing.
“I knew it was the way of the world to kick a fellow out of the way when you had got as much as you wanted out of him, and I suppose as I am an old married man I have no right to expect anything better, but I did think you’d have treated me better than this!”
“Don’t,” she said brokenly, looking up at him with her eyes full of tears; “I’m too tired to fight you.”
Lambert took her hand quickly. “My child,” he said, in a voice rough with contrition and pity, “I didn’t mean to hurt you; I didn’t know what I was saying.” He tenderly stroked the hand that lay limply in his. “Tell me you’re not vexed with me.”
“No,” said Francie, with a childish sob; “but you said horrid things to me—”
“Well, I never will again,” he said soothingly. “We’ll always be friends, won’t we?” with an interrogatory pressure of the hand. He had never seen her in such a mood as this; he forgot the inevitable effect on her nerves of what she had gone through, and his egotism made him believe that this collapse of her usual supple hardihood was due to the power of his reproaches.