Justine faced her steadily. "There is nothing in Mr. Amherst's letter to make me change my opinion. I still think it lies with you to bring him back."
Bessy raised a glittering face to her—all hardness and laughter. "Such modesty, my dear! As if I had a chance of succeeding where you failed!"
She sprang up, brushing the curls from her temples with a petulant gesture. "Don't mind me if I'm cross—but I've had a dose of preaching from Maria Ansell, and I don't know why my friends should treat me like a puppet without any preferences of my own, and press me upon a man who has done his best to show that he doesn't want me. As a matter of fact, he and I are luckily agreed on that point too—and I'm afraid all the good advice in the world won't persuade us to change our opinion!"
Justine held her ground. "If I believed that of either of you, I shouldn't have written—I should not be pleading with you now—And Mr. Amherst doesn't believe it either," she added, after a pause, conscious of the risk she was taking, but thinking the words might act like a blow in the face of a person sinking under a deadly narcotic.
Bessy's smile deepened to a sneer. "I see you've talked me over thoroughly—and on his views I ought perhaps not to have risked an opinion——"
"We have not talked you over," Justine exclaimed. "Mr. Amherst could never talk of you...in the way you think...." And under the light staccato of Bessy's laugh she found resolution to add: "It is not in that way that I know what he feels."
"Ah? I should be curious to hear, then——"
Justine turned to the letter, which still lay between them. "Will you read the last sentence again? The postscript, I mean."
Bessy, after a surprised glance at her, took the letter up with the deprecating murmur of one who acts under compulsion rather than dispute about a trifle.
"The postscript? Let me see...'Don't let my wife ride Impulse.'—Et puis?" she murmured, dropping the page again.