“Then his face belied him.”
“Would it please you, if I had ventured to forestall your promised gift, and accepted all Felix has to offer me, himself. I have my whims, like you, and follow them as recklessly.”
Helwyze knit his brows, but answered negligently, “Folly never pleases me. It will be amusing to see which tires first. I shall miss him; but his place is already filled, and Gladys has the charm of novelty.”
“You have spoken, then?”
“Forewarned, forearmed; I have her promise, and Felix can go when he likes.”
Olivia paled, dropped her mask, and exclaimed in undisguised alarm,—
“There is no need: I have no thought of such folly! My kindness to Felix was the sparing him an avowal, which was simply absurd. A word, a laugh, did it, for ridicule cures more quickly and surely than compassion.”
“I thought so. Why try to fence with me, Madama? you always get the worst of it,” and Helwyze made the green twig whistle through the air with a sharp turn of the wrist, as he rose to go; for these two, bound together by a mutual wrong, seldom met without bitter words, the dregs of a love which might have blest them both.
He found Felix waiting for him, in a somewhat haughty mood; Olivia having judged wisely that ridicule, though a harsh, was a speedy cure for the youthful delusion, which had been fostered by the isolation in which they lived, and the ardent imagination of a poet.
“You were right, sir. What are your commands?” he asked, controlling disappointment, pique, and unwillingness with a spirit that won respect and forbearance even from Helwyze, who answered with a cordial warmth, as rare as charming,—