Arctura thenceforth avoided her cousin as much as she could—only remembering that the house was hers, and she must not make him feel he was not welcome to use it. They met at meals, and she tried to behave as if nothing unpleasant had happened and things were as before he went away.
“You are very cruel, Arctura,” he said one morning he met her in the terrace avenue.
“Cruel?” returned Arctura coldly; “I am not cruel. I would not willingly hurt anyone.”
“You hurt me much; you give me not a morsel, not a crumb of your society!”
“Percy,” said Arctura, “if you will be content to be my cousin, we shall get on well enough; but if you are set on what cannot be—once for all, believe me, it is of no use. You care for none of the things I live for! I feel as if we belonged to different worlds, so little have we in common. You may think me hard, but it is better we should understand each other. If you imagine that, because I have the property, you have a claim on me, be sure I will never acknowledge it. I would a thousand times rather you had the property and I were in my grave!”
“I will be anything, do anything, learn anything you please!” cried Forgue, his heart aching with disappointment.
“I know what such submission is worth!” said Arctura. “I should be everything till we were married, and then nothing! You dissemble, you hide even from yourself, but you are not hard to read.”
Perhaps she would not have spoken just so severely, had she not been that morning unusually annoyed with his behaviour to Donal, and at the same time specially pleased with the calm, unconsciously dignified way in which Donal took it, casting it from him as the rock throws aside the sea-wave: it did not concern him! The dull world has got the wrong phrase: it is he who resents an affront who pockets it! he who takes no notice, lets it lie in the dirt.
CHAPTER LXVIII.
LARKIE.
It was a lovely day in spring.