'Oblige me by allowing me to be the best judge of my own affairs.'
'Do you know I very much doubt if you're that,' said Miss Entwhistle earnestly, really moved by his inability to perceive consequences. Here he had got everything, everything to make him happy for the rest of his life,—the wife he loved adoring him, believing in him, blotting out by her mere marrying him every doubt as to the exact manner of Vera's death, and all he had to do was to be kind and ordinarily decent. And poor Everard—it was absurd of her to mind for him, but she did in fact at that moment mind for him, he seemed such a pathetic human being, blindly bent on ruining his own happiness—would spoil it all, inevitably smash it all sooner or later, if he wasn't able to see, wasn't able to understand....
Wemyss considered her remark so impertinent that he felt he would have been amply justified in requesting her to leave his house then and there, dark or no dark, train or no train. And so he would have done, if he hadn't happened to prefer a long rather than a short scene.
'I didn't ask you into my library to hear your opinion of my character,' he said, lighting his pipe.
'Well then,' said Miss Entwhistle, for there was too much at stake for her to allow herself either to be silenced or goaded, 'let me tell you a few things about Lucy's.'
'About Lucy's?' echoed Wemyss, amazed at such effrontery. 'About my wife's?'
'Yes,' said Miss Entwhistle, very earnestly. 'It's the sort of character that takes things to heart, and she'll be miserable—miserable, Everard, and worry and worry if I just disappear as you wish me to without a word. Of course I'll go, and I promise I'll never come again unless you ask me to. But don't, because you're angry, insist on something that will make Lucy extraordinarily unhappy. Let me say good-night to her now, and good-bye to-morrow morning. I tell you she'll be terribly worried if I don't. She'll think'—Miss Entwhistle tried to smile—'that you've turned me out. And then, you see, if she thinks that, she won't be able——' Miss Entwhistle hesitated. 'Well, she won't be able to be proud of you. And that, my dear Everard—' she looked at him with a faint smile of deprecation and apology that she, a spinster, should talk of this—'gives love its deepest wound.'
Wemyss stared at her, too much amazed to speak. In his house.... In his own house!
'I'm sorry,' she said, still more earnestly, 'if this annoys you, but I do want—I really do think it is very important.'
There was then a silence during which they looked at each other, he at her in amazement, she at him trying to hope,—hope that he would take what she had said in good part. It was so vital that he should understand, that he should get an idea of the effect on Lucy of just that sort of unkind, even cruel behaviour. His own happiness was involved as well. Tragic, tragic for every one if he couldn't be got to see....