‘Leave Wellfield! Go away!’ she exclaimed, turning suddenly pallid. ‘What makes you say such a thing?’
‘Should you care much if I did?’ he asked recklessly and ruthlessly. ‘Would it–can I believe it would make any difference to you?’
He was standing before her, looking, as the girl in her sad infatuation thought, so noble, so calm, so undaunted, after all his misfortunes–undisturbed–only sad and a little despondent after his reverses–more of a hero than ever. Ah! if she might only tell him what she felt and wished! But at the moment something held her back; she could not say all–could not speak the words her heart was breaking to utter. She drew a long breath, and said:
‘You–it would make me very sad if you went away, for then I should feel more than ever what interlopers we must seem to you. I should feel that we had driven you out from your old home. And you speak of papa’s goodness–but is it goodness? I don’t call it the work for you–drudging in an office in that way, like some common clerk. I should think after a time it would drive you almost mad.’
‘Oh no! It is only the getting into harness that is such hard work–the learning how to become a machine. I fancy when that is accomplished, and the routine mastered, one can go on easily enough–almost unconsciously. I shall get used to it sometime. Meanwhile, I am thankful to be so well off.’
‘You are not thankful to be well off when you know you are very ill off,’ said Nita, with agitation. ‘And you will never get used to it. If you could you would not be what you are–it would not all be so horrible.... Oh, I wish the Abbey–I wish the money were mine, that I might ask you to take it as your right–your inheritance! But I can do nothing, nothing; I am powerless, helpless, and I believe it will kill me!’
She turned away and threw herself upon a couch, burying her face in the cushions, and trying to stifle her sobs. For, with a great, overwhelming rush, the conviction had come to her of what she had really said–a sense of intolerable shame, an agony of humiliation was torturing her.
For one moment Wellfield gazed at her, at the prostrate form and heaving shoulders, convulsed with sobs. Then he made a step to the sofa, and knelt down beside her.
‘Nita!’ he whispered, ‘dear Nita! Look up! I want to speak to you.’
But she would not raise her face, exclaiming in a broken, stifled voice: