"No," she maintained. "I have known him for a long while now. I believe him to be my very good friend."
"What?" he said.
She glanced at him, half startled by the brief query; but instantly she looked away again with a curious, tingling sense of shock. For it was to her as though she had looked into the heart of a consuming fire.
"Aren't you rather behind the times?" he drawled. "That was—as you say—a long while ago."
The shock passed, leaving her strangely giddy, as one on the edge of inconceivable depth. She could say no word in answer. She was utterly and hopelessly at a loss.
With scarcely a pause Nap turned to Violet Shirley, who was seated on his right, and plunged without preliminary into a gay flirtation to which all the world was at liberty to listen if it could not approve. Ralph Waring, thus deprived of his rightful partner, solaced himself with Mrs. Randal, who was always easy to please; and the major on her other side relapsed into bearish gloom.
It was with unspeakable relief that Anne rose at length from that dinner-table. She had a deep longing to escape altogether, to go back to the quiet Manor, where at least all was peace. He had hurt her more subtly than she could have deemed possible. Had his friendship really meant so much to her? Or was it only her pride that suffered to think he valued hers so lightly? It seemed that he was fickle then, fickle as everyone declared him to be. And yet in her heart she did not for a moment believe it. That single glimpse she had had, past the gibing devil in his eyes, deep into the man himself, had told her something different.
He hated her then, he hated her as the cause of his downfall. This seemed the more likely. And yet—and yet—did she really believe this either?
"Dear Lady Carfax, do play to us!" urged her hostess. "It will be such a treat to hear you."
She rose half-mechanically and went to the piano, struck a few chords and began to play, still so deep in her maze of conjecture that she hardly knew what she had chosen.