She would have made him at ease so prettily; and he decided to be blunt and strike at once, if he would say what he had come to say.
“Betty,” said he, “I have come to say a thing which it hurts me to the quick to say; which of course must wound you even more. Don’t make it an added bitterness to me by being too much your dainty self—rather be unpleasant—if you can.”
The light went out of the trustful grey eyes; the smile flickered out and slowly left the pure face. The slender hands trembled a little—the large eyelids fell, and she bowed her comely head. She wondered what new agony lay in store for her.
Thus she stood and said never a word. Just one little movement—the interlacing of the slender fingers together before her—it hid the trembling of the white hands—and she prepared to meet what cut of the lash should fall, in silent dignity.
Anthony was taken up with his own difficulty,—yet, as he spoke, the picture of the girl’s humiliation slowly bit into his imagination.
“Betty,” he said, “I do not know whether you are aware of it, but there are only two people between Noll, through his mother, and Lord Wyntwarde of Cavil....” The lash cut deep, but he was too engrossed in his object to see the girl’s courage. “Lord Wyntwarde is, frankly, somewhat of a brute—capricious, full of whims. He has, after ignoring the boy from his birth, suddenly expressed a wish that Noll should go to Oxford, a wish also to provide a career for him—such as—I—cannot give him.... He has made, as one of his conditions, a most binding proviso that Noll shall not marry without his consent, nor outside his set——”
The girl spake no smallest word, gave no sign.
Anthony went on:
“I am going to ask you not to spoil Noll’s career——”
The words cut into the girl’s very flesh; but she said not a word.