“What is the meaning of all this?” he said to her. “First, tell me, who engineered this mission of Rupert’s? Did you?”
“No, indeed,” she answered, with passion, filled for once with conscious innocence. “How can you accuse me of such a thing?”
“I am glad to hear it,” he replied, taking no notice of her indignation. “Then, as I thought, it was Dick. Be quiet and listen! Rupert’s employment was suggested more than a week ago. I heard about it in the House of Lords and put a stopper on it. I know that Dick saw Southwick yesterday, because the latter mentioned it in a note to me, since which time the idea has revived. You can form your own conclusions.”
“It is impossible,” broke in Edith. “He would never be so mean.”
“You have a high idea of your cousin, whom, for my part, I think capable of anything low. Well, it does not matter, it is done and cannot be undone. Now of course Tabitha was right. I admire her power of getting to the heart of things. Whatever may have passed between you, it was you who would not go to Egypt, not Rupert who would not take you. You know well enough that you could have made him take you; you could have refused to be left behind; but you talked about sea-sickness and heat and cholera—he let it all out at table.”
Edith sat silent. As other women had found before her, it was useless to argue with this remorseless man, especially when he had truth upon his side.
“Now,” he went on, “why did you refuse to go? Oh, pray save yourself the trouble of invention. I will tell you. As Tabitha says, because there is still too much Dick. You do not like the man who is going to be your husband, Edith; you shrink from him; oh, I have seen you clench your hand and set your lips when he touched you. You are glad of this opportunity to postpone your married life. It has even occurred to you,” and he bent over her and looked her in the eyes, “that from such missions as this, men often do not come back, as it has occurred to Dick. They pass away in a blaze of glory and become immortal, like Gordon, or they vanish silently, unnoted, and unremembered, like many another man almost as brave and great as he.”
Edith could bear it no longer, but sprang to her feet with a cry of: “Not that! Not that!”
“Not that, as yet, but all the rest, eh?”
“If so, am I responsible?” she answered. “Did I make my own heart, and who forced me into this marriage?”