The question came like a bolt; the answer was a brief “No.”
“No?” Anne’s eyes were fastened on the girl; Millie’s honesty gave unwilling explanation.
“Never your motives. He said once that Mr Forbes was his friend, and that the breaking off of your engagement was not his fault. He said this before—”
“Before?”
“Before he knew you.”
Anne meditated. Her eyes softened.
“I suppose it is the everlasting I—I—I, again, which makes me imagine that people talk when they are not even thinking of me. However, it is true that he misjudges me, I had it from his own lips, and I am sorry, foolishly sorry, because he is a man—” She broke off and laughed—“Somehow my vanity would make me wish to appear at one’s best before him. Does that shock you again?”
“Why should it?”
“I couldn’t say why, but I am for ever shocking people unintentionally. You have not got over my talking of my engagements, yet—they don’t judge me harshly, any one of those men would marry me to-morrow. Yes, even Mr Wareham’s friend, in spite of Mr Wareham!”
Women, however unsophisticated, possess the gift of intuition. Millie divined that Miss Dalrymple wished her to talk of Wareham, and was ready to profess a spasmodic anger for the pleasure of hearing him defended. She was reluctant and ashamed of her reluctance. The shame stung her into crying—“Why do you talk of Mr Wareham’s judging you harshly? You must know very well that if it ever was so, he has forgiven you.”