“I don’t think she would.”
“Do you remember,” he began, with uncertain voice, “that not long ago I was going to ask you to do something to please me.”
“I remember it.”
“Can you guess what that was?”
She did not answer at once. Her face showed inner movements of conflicting kinds; she seemed to struggle to banish that hardness of expression which fixed her features against an unwelcome thought.
“Had it,” she asked at length, “anything to do with Mrs. Clarendon?”
“Yes, Ada, it had. You do not like her. One’s likes and dislikes cannot easily be altered to suit another’s wish, but if by any means I could bring you to kind thoughts of her, I think I should be content to forget every other hope that life still nourishes in me.”
She did not speak.
“Can you be open enough with me to say why it is you dislike her?” He spoke very softly and kindly, and with a hint of things which could not but touch a listener.
Ada began with trembling: