She looked scared.
“I—I suppose I shall have to, if he wishes it.”
“But you don’t want to?”
He had no business to say this, and he knew it. But the matter was so vitally interesting to him, he cared so deeply what became of her, that he found himself floundering into hopeless indiscretions of speech before he knew where he was.
She drew a long breath, stared in front of her and broke passionately into the truth.
“I can’t want to, I can’t, I can’t. I’ve tried to want to, I’ve written saying I wanted to, but oh! it’s too hard, it’s too hard. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this; you’ve no business to ask me such things, no business to listen to my answers. But I tell you there are some things one can’t forget, some slights one can’t forgive; and I was made to suffer, in little things, stupid things, but so deeply that the remembrance of it will never die out of my heart. There! I ought not to say this, especially now when he’s ill: but it’s true, and I can’t help it.”
“Poor thing!”
It was a most ludicrous appellation, and he knew it, as he looked sympathetically at the beautiful woman before him. But the words came straight from his heart, and she was grateful. She smiled up at him through the tears which were gathering in her eyes.
“I’m glad you’re sorry for me,” said she, ingenuously. “I’m sorry for myself. But I ought not to be: I ought to be spending my time being sorry for him! For after all, it must be very, very lonely for him—”
“But he seems to like loneliness,” said Southerley, sharply.