Valentine paused.
He found it far from easy to say as much as he had said already.
Hubert Kestridge answered him quietly.
“Ah! but I was not sure, Ambleton. Nor am I sure now. It is my wife who tells me that Polly cared for me. I have never dared to think this for myself! She says it now to make the hurt deeper, the breach between us wider. Something seems to assure me it is only her malice that suggests this. She knows I loved her sister; it is easy, therefore, to invent now a story of how this sister loved me.”
The two men remained silent a long time.
Valentine felt an oppression like a pain upon his heart.
He was truly sorry for this man before him, and yet it was but natural that he should shrink from Kestridge a little, for circumstances, one and all, pointed to the fact that what Winnie had said to her husband out of malice was the full truth.
In his single-minded honesty Valentine never dreamed of accusing Christina of any motive in telling him what she had told him, although at the same time he had strongly objected to having done so, but as he was utterly blind to the schemes Christina was forming for the future, it was not likely he should imagine she had introduced this story of the girl’s attachment to Kestridge only to sever all possibility of his approaching her with his own story. And it was, therefore, all clear to Valentine now, that Polly did care for this other man, and that it was because of this love she had torn herself from her mother’s side and gone away, he knew not where, rather than risk a meeting with Kestridge.
Consequently, he would have rather seen any other creature in the world at this moment than the moody, unhappy man opposite to him; and it was impossible for him to resist a sigh of relief when Hubert, after a few, conventional words, rose and they separated.
To attempt to minister to Kestridge’s trouble was a task beyond Valentine; nevertheless, he felt sorry when they were apart that he had not tried to do something.