“I’m ashamed to say it is.”
“Well?”
“It’s anything but well. Though I am her uncle, I do say she has behaved disgracefully. She says she did not know her own mind when she accepted you, and that she has discovered she always cared for Adolphus Warren. His going away, she declares, opened her eyes—”
“You should give effects their right causes,” said Anthony, in a low bitter voice. “Say the change in his position.”
“I’m half afraid of it,” said Mr Bennett, whipping the old grey in his perturbation. “What can I say? Nothing can be worse. It has cut us both to the heart. I utterly declined at first to tell you, I was so ashamed; but she’s had one fit of hysterics after another, until her aunt is quite worn out; and, unpleasant as it was, I felt you ought to be kept in ignorance no longer. I’ve always thought she was so amenable to what was right, but I’m really afraid nothing will move her.”
“You need not fear my making the attempt,” said Anthony, still in the same tone.
“You’ve a right to hold her to her promise,” said Mr Bennett, unheeding. “Of course you’ve a right, and so I told her. But women are such irrational beings, that I really believe sometimes their minds can’t grasp the obligation of a right. You might bring an action against her, for the matter of that. I should not oppose it. Any possible reparation—”
“Do you suppose that would console me?” said Anthony, grimly. “But I’ll tell you the whole truth, for you have behaved just as every one in the neighbourhood would have expected from you. It isn’t pleasant for a man to be kicked over at any time, but I had begun to think, from one or two reasons with which I need not trouble you, that we had made a mutual mistake. I went so far one day as to tell Miss Lovell something of the sort—”
“You did!” said Mr Bennett, facing round in wonder.
“And if she had known her own mind,—it was not so long ago as to make that impossible,—it would have saved some unpleasantness.”