“I cannot believe you,” I said coldly.
“It is true.”
I stared at her; and she returned my look with a strange mixture of shame and defiance. “Why?” I said at last. “In heaven’s name, why, Miss Wilmer? What have I done to you? Your mother I know. But had I a hand in it? God forbid! Was I within a hundred miles of it? No. Your brother—and there again, I find that hard to forgive. Your father had spared my life, sheltered me, brought me here; could you not believe that I was grateful? Could you not believe that I would do much to serve him and something to repay him? That all that it was in my power to do for your brother, by my exertions or my influence, I would do? But you did not tell me. You did not ask me?”
“No,” she said.
“Why?” I asked bluntly. She did not answer. “Why?” I repeated. I was at the end of my anger. I had said what was in my mind and said it with all the severity I could wish. And I was sure that I had made her suffer. Now I wanted to understand. I sought for light upon her. There was a puzzle here and I had not the clue.
But she stood mute. Pale, forbidding, not avoiding my eyes but rather challenging them, and very handsome in her sullenness, she confronted me. At last, as I still waited, and still kept silence, she spoke. “And after I had told you?” she said. “If you had offered help, would it then have been easier to—to stand aside?”
“And let me go to my death?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Good God!” I cried. I could not check the words, I was so deeply shocked. If she had deliberately considered that, she was indeed determined, she was indeed ruthless; and there was nothing more to be done. “I am sorry,” I said. “I had thought, Miss Wilmer, that I might say what was in my mind and then let the thing be as if it had never been. I wished to speak and then—to let there be peace between us. I thought that we might still come to be friends. But if we are so far apart as that, there can be nothing between us, not even forgiveness.”
“No,” she answered—but her head sank a little and I fancied that she spoke sadly. “There can be nothing between us. Nothing, sir. We are worlds apart.”