"Have you had news?" she inquired. "You thought that a letter might be there. Bad, is it?"
"It is not good," he replied, briefly.
"I am sorry."
"That is—it tells me—" (Wilfrid disciplined his tongue) "that I—we are—a lieutenant on half-pay may say that he is ruined, I suppose, when his other supplies are cut off!…"
"I can excuse him for thinking it," said Lady Charlotte. She exhibited no sign of eagerness for his statement of facts.
Her outward composure and a hard animation of countenance (which, having ceased the talking within himself, he had now leisure to notice) humiliated him. The sting helped him to progress.
"I may try to doubt it as much as I please, to avoid seeing what must follow…. I may shut my eyes in the dark, but when the light stares me in the face…I give you my word that I have not been justified even in imagining such a catastrophe."
"The preamble is awful," said Lady Charlotte, rising from her recumbent posture.
"Pardon me; I have no right to intrude my feelings. I learn to-day, for the first time, that we are—are ruined."
She did not lift her eyebrows, or look fixedly; but without any change at all, said, "Is there no doubt about it?"