She went to the window and threw it open that she might lean out and breathe the open air. Her head burned and ached, and her eyes smarted with a smouldering fire in her brain. She felt more and more how entirely it must have been Doris’s doing. Doris had smiled at him, and confided in him, and managed first to convey a pathetic picture of her own loneliness, and then to suggest how happy her life might be with him.
And of course Dudley was all chivalry at heart, and trusting, and tender-hearted; that was one reason why he had always deplored her, Hal’s, boyish independence and determination to fend for herself. He did not understand the vigorous, enterprising, working woman.
Immersed in his books and his studies, he had allowed himself to be influenced largely by caricatures, and by the noisy stir of the platform woman. But he understood the Doris type, or thought he did, and placed their engaging dependence before such spirited resolution as her own and Ethel’s.
And how to help him? How, now, to thwart the carrying out of Doris’ cleverly carried scheme.
Her first thought was Ethel and Basil. She would go to them, and appeal to them to help her.
And then she remembered that “blood is thicker than water.” How could they thwart their own sister; and in any case what would Dudley ever see in it but a persecution that would intensify his affection? One hint that Doris was victimised, and she knew Dudley well enough to realise he would only marry her the more quickly, whether he had learned the truth or not.
Opposition of any sort would probably do far more harm than good at present. There was nothing for it but to meet the blow with the best face possible, and hope time might yet bring release.
Then her thoughts went back to Sir Edwin, and quite suddenly and unaccountably she longed to tell him about it. He would be interested for her sake, and he would cheer her up, and make her hopeful in spite of herself.
And yet—
No; to see him again, feeling as she felt now, would only mean to see him in a mood of weakness, that might make her less able to withstand him.