“Wrong?” repeated Bice, looking at her. To her, poor child, it seemed that she was only shrinking from a duty, from the stern call to self-sacrifice. That there could be any higher principle, that no aim, whether we call it self-sacrifice, or self-surrender, or anything else, can sanctify one step taken out of the right road, she did not realise. All her life she had been brought up to think of right and wrong as having somewhat hazy outlines. As she told Clive’s story over again, perhaps she dwelt more on the fear of disgrace than on his sin. But she could not help noticing the look of pain which gathered in Phillis’s brown eyes. She stopped and sighed.
“Now you are shocked,” she said. “So was Mr Ibbetson. You think it is hopeless.”
“Wait a moment,” said Phillis, “let me think.”
They walked on silently beneath the trees; the grass near them was lilac with autumnal crocuses, a great crimson rose swung itself down from a pole.
“I wonder if I am right,” Phillis said, hesitatingly. “It seems to me there might be some mistake. Mr Trent may not know, and you have no right to think hard things of your brother without proof. Surely you will ask him, ask him directly.”
“But Oliver said—”
“Oh, never mind,” said Phillis, with a touch of impatience. “Tell him that you can’t follow his advice in that respect. Suppose it is not so bad as he imagines, I don’t see how you can expect Mr Masters to forgive your want of confidence. No, be open and write. Perhaps he can clear himself. At any rate do not marry without love. If Mr Trent is an honourable man, he will not attempt to take advantage of your anxiety.”
Phillis had not meant to say so much, but feeling strongly as to Mr Trent’s conduct, she could not abstain. An instinctive aversion had risen in her mind when she first saw him at Bologna, and this story of Bice’s awoke more doubts, not to use the harsher word suspicions, than she liked to acknowledge even to herself. At the best his conduct was both ungenerous and unmanly.
Bice caught at her advice, which seemed to lift off some of her perplexities. She was very grave and quiet all the rest of the afternoon, keeping away as much as she could from both Jack and Oliver, and looking every now and then wistfully at Phillis. If she had known what Phillis, too, was thinking, what other resolutions had been made on that day, when doubts and fears seemed to be flying about in the air!
They dined at the marble table on the terrace, and the picture, with the piled-up fruits, the dancing shadows, was as pretty as when Jack first saw it, though he had a dissatisfied feeling of change. Cartouche sat on a balustrade, and caught grapes when anyone threw them to him. Captain Leyton was full of glee at having got one of the gardeners to stand as a foreground for his sketch. Trent looked uneasily at Bice; she was quieter, and did not shrink from his glance as she had done in the morning, and he was not sure that it was a good sign.