Anthony blundered on, brutally unconscious of the simple urgent fact that the girl had not wanted to spoil the lad’s career, that she was in no way on her defence—that he was committing himself to the base insolence, the most ignoble insolence of which we can be guilty, of the lie that presumes the accusation of the innocent. It were as though indifferent cutlery should beg tempered steel to try and be tempered steel.
“You are very beautiful,” he said—“you probably do not realize how beautiful. And I am going to appeal to you not to allow Noll to get engaged to you in case he should wish it—for it would be folly in me to pretend that I don’t see that he has a boy’s love for you, which, if other things were different, God knows would be the happiest thing for him.”
So he blundered on, excusing the girl from his own insolences; even making all allowances for her out of the deeps of his self-sufficiency.
Betty’s fingers remained tight clasped before her—her head bowed down—but she made no slightest movement, standing deathly still.
And Anthony, his false step irretrievably made, realized slowly that he had done a brutal and foolish thing; saw perhaps even more clearly that he had won a success; but, rebuffed by the girl’s silence at last, and embarrassed and not without a suspicion of shame, he slowly retired from the room.
The door closed upon him.
The girl was left utterly alone.
A hot flush had burnt into her face.
She stretched out her hand and with difficulty reached the mantel.
They had now turned even her deep love for this youth, the only being left to her, into a thing to bring her shame. It was the whip of scorpions.