Canning took an impatient step forward.
"Nevertheless, it's pure impudence for him to send to this lady, sneaking for favors now. Let's--"
"Mr. Canning, I--I'm afraid I ought to speak to him!"
"What?" said Mr. Canning, wheeling at the voice, as if stung.
"Oh!... That's kind of you!"
Carlisle felt, under Mr. Canning's incredulous gaze, that this sudden upwhirl of misfortune was the further refinement of cruelty. She hardly knew what to do. Scarcely thinkable as it was to dismiss Hugo Canning from her presence, it seemed even more impossible to pack off this nameless intruder. Inconceivable malignity of chance, indeed! Only one doubt of its all being settled and blown over had lingered on to trouble her; and now without warning this doubt rose and rushed upon her in the person of the sudden stranger--and before Mr. Canning, too. It occurred to her, with ominous sinkings of the heart, that she had relied mistakenly upon Dalhousie's gentlemanliness. What horrid intention was concealed behind these strange words about his taking matters into his own hands? And suppose she refused to see the emissary alone, and he then said: "Well, then, I'll just have to speak before your friend."... What would Mr. Canning think of her then? What was he going to think of her anyway?
Carlisle, having risen, answered her protector's gaze with a look of appealing sweetness, and said in a low, perturbed voice:
"I'm so dreadfully sorry. But I don't quite see how I could refuse just to--to hear what he has to say. Under the circumstances, would it--wouldn't it be simply unkind?"
Canning said, with small lightening of his restrained displeasure: "Ah! I'm to understand, then, that you wish to give this--gentleman an audience alone?"
It was, of course, the last thing on earth she desired, but God clearly was out of his heaven to-day, and Mr. Canning would like her better in the long run if he stepped aside for a space now. She said, with a restraint which did her credit: