"No—because you have held me off, have shown me so plainly that you disliked and distrusted me. You didn't always dislike me—what have I done?"
"That's only my way. As I told you this morning, Lady Seddon, I'm not an emotional person. But I feel more than I show. I would like to help you, if you will let me."
Rachel leaned forward and caught first Lizzie's arm, then her hand. Then she spoke, her voice quivering as though she were forcing upon herself the most intense control.
"Oh! you're so strange, so odd I don't know what you feel, whether you care, but these last months have been so hard for me that even though you hate me, despise me, it doesn't matter—nothing matters if only I can get away from myself, you're so different—so dry, so hard, but you are, you are!—just as hard——" she stopped—Lizzie drew her hand away.
"Please—don't tell me things if you feel about me like that. It hasn't been my fault, has it, that we don't get on? I didn't ask to come here, to know you—let me go—let me go back. Don't bother about me—leave me alone," she at last brought out.
But Rachel said more urgently—"No, don't go now. Even though you don't care, even though you hate me, help me. I've no one else. If only you knew the things I've suffered these past weeks, how I've hated myself for my indecision, for my weakness and shame. I don't know why I feel as though you were the only person to whom I could talk. I'm being driven, I suppose, by this long silence—and then you're so absolutely to be trusted—even though you dislike me—you're straight all through—I've always known that."
At Lizzie's heart again now that strange confusion of sensation, and with it a sure conviction that fate had this scene between them in hand, and that events now, whatever the hours might bring forth, were beyond her control.
"Yes, you may trust me," she said drily—"I'm useful, at any rate for that."
Lizzie watched her as, in the little pause that followed, Rachel struggled for concentration and for the point of view that would make the strongest appeal. That, Lizzie grimly knew, was the thing for which the girl was struggling and it yielded her the pleasanter irony because she was, herself, so surely aware of that one fact that all Rachel's confessions contained—
For herself she had only confidently to sit and wait.... Then Rachel plunged—