Alice was not satisfied with her brother. The practical aspects of the rupture she could consider leniently, but the tone he assumed was jarring to her instincts. Though nothing like a warm friendship existed between her and Emma, she sympathised, in a way impossible to Richard, with the sorrows of the abandoned girl. She was conscious of what her judgment would be if another man had acted thus; and though this was not so much a matter of consciousness, she felt that Richard might have spoken in a way more calculated to aid her in taking his side. She wished, in fact, to see only his advantage, and was very much tempted to see everything but that.
‘But you can’t keep her in the dark any longer,’ she urged. ‘Why, it’s cruel!’
‘I can’t tell her,’ he repeated monotonously.
Alice drew in her feet. It symbolised retiring within her defences. She saw what he was aiming at, and felt not at all disposed to pleasure him. There was a long silence; Alice was determined not to be the first to break it.
‘You refuse to help me?’ Richard asked at length, between his teeth.
‘I think it would be every bit as bad for me as for you,’ she replied.
‘That you can’t think,’ he argued. ‘She can’t blame you; you’ve only to say I’ve behaved like a blackguard, and you’re out of it.’
‘And when do you mean to tell mother?’
‘She’ll have to hear of it from other people. I can’t tell her.’
Richard had a suspicion that he was irretrievably ruining himself in his sister’s opinion, and it did not improve his temper. It was a foretaste of the wider obloquy to come upon him, possibly as hard to bear as any condemnation to which he had exposed himself. He shook himself out of the chair.