Mildred, with hands before her on the table, made the tips of her fingers meet. Her lips were drawn in; her eyes seemed looking for something minute on the cloth.
“You know,” she said at length, “I suspected what was going on. I couldn’t help.”
“Of course you couldn’t.”
“Naturally I thought it was some one whose acquaintance you had made at the shop.”
“How could I think of marrying any one of that kind?”
“I should have been grieved.”
“You may believe me, Milly; Mr. Widdowson is a man you will respect and like as soon as you know him. He couldn’t have behaved to me with more delicacy. Not a word from him, spoken or written, has ever pained me—except that he tells me he suffers so dreadfully, and of course I can’t hear that without pain.”
“To respect, and even to like, a man, isn’t at all the same as loving him.”
“I said you would respect and like him,” exclaimed Monica, with humorous impatience. “I don’t want you to love him.”
Mildred laughed, with constraint.