Over Miss Eden’s pretty face there came a slightly puzzled look.
“I don’t say it’s unnatural in the circumstances, but I think you’re too hard,” she said. “I’ll tell you what I’ve always said to myself about Mr Bayre, when he has been more than usually brusque in his manner to me. It is this: Is it fair to judge a man directly after he has experienced two great shocks? I dare say you know all about them, what happened in the case of his wife, and then in that of his cousin. Just think of it,” went on the girl, warmly, her face lighting up with generous emotion, her voice deep, and low, and thrilling; “to lose them both, one after the other, within a few weeks!”
“Was he quite without blame?” asked Bayre, quickly. “To judge by what I have seen of him it’s not likely.”
“What have you seen?” retorted Miss Eden. “Nothing. Less than nothing. He hasn’t even spoken to you!”
Bayre laughed rather grimly.
“Exactly. A gentleman who shows such marked amiability to a kinsman would be the sort of person to treat others in the same way.”
She shook her head slowly.
“From what I’ve heard,” she said with conviction, “he must have been very different before those two things happened. To begin with, he was very generous. If the poor in the islands wanted help he was always the first to give it. Now he is soured, changed, I admit; he seems stunned by his misfortunes, and he shuts himself up to brood upon them. But I believe that this mood will pass; give him another six months and I believe he will be his old self again. At least, I hope so. At present he is suffering from two blows to his affections, and he seems afraid, positively afraid to trust himself to love anybody else.”
“Well, I’m sure I don’t want him to love me,” said Bayre in an off-hand tone.
“No, it doesn’t matter to you, of course, because your life is spent away from him,” said the girl, rather ruefully. “But it does to others, to me, and to—to others besides me.”