“Why don’t you speak?” she said quickly. “What are you thinking about? Not?”
She paused as if expecting some continuation of this “not.” Phillis, however, took no notice. If Bice guessed she could not help it, but she would not suggest the name which seemed to her ridiculously palpable. There was a little pause in which they could hear Mrs Leyton’s laugh in the next room. When Bice began to speak again it was in a slow strained voice.
“Did you really suppose it was Mr Ibbetson?” she demanded, “and did you really think that I should take it from him? I tell you I know as well as if he stood before us, and swore it, that he would not have dared to offer me such an insult, and sooner than accept it I would—I would almost marry Oliver Trent.”
Phillis was astonished. Perhaps she had not credited the girl with so much delicacy of feeling, perhaps she thought that of all men, Jack was the one from whom Bice would have been the most ready to accept an obligation.
“I beg your pardon,” she said with great meekness. “It really was Mr Ibbetson of whom I had thought, because he had already shown great interest—”
She stopped. Bice finished the sentence very calmly.
“In Clive, yes. He was very good to Clive. Very good indeed.”
Phillis was staring at her. “Clive! He didn’t know Clive when he went to England. Don’t you know that he went on purpose to see him? Has he never so much as told you? He went to see him, but he went on your account.”
While she spoke the girl’s face had flushed a soft and delicate colour, but she still kept her eyes fixed upon Phillis. And when Phillis had ended she said:—“No, I don’t know it, and I don’t believe it. If Mr Ibbetson went on our account, it was because you asked him. Did you not ask him?”
“I told him,” Phillis said, a little bewildered at this view of the matter which had never before presented itself to her. Bice looked at her wistfully and smiled.