"What have you done? You do not understand——"
"I understand enough—too much." With an effort she changed her tone to one of infinite disdain. "You are under some strange hallucination, Mr. Andrews, which alone can account for this extraordinary, intolerable behaviour. If my father had been alive—but I am still his daughter, and you, what are you?"
The words in themselves might still have failed to arrest him, but the look, the gesture, the withering emphasis on the "you?"—he stood still, and after a moment, staggered a step across the pathway like a drunken man.
"If you confess it was all a delusion," resumed Leonore, in slightly modified accents, for she was now only eager to put an end to the scene, and a twinge of pity made itself felt, "if you allow that you have utterly misinterpreted a little ordinary civility—well, perhaps it was more than civility, call it kindness if you will—I will try to forget,—but you also must forget, and never breath a word of this again."
"But—but——" he faltered. Then staggered afresh, unrestrainedly, it might almost have been thought ostentatiously. It was not a pretty spectacle.
"For Heaven's sake, pull yourself together," cried Leonore, with a sense of repulsion. "Be ashamed of this. Own that you are ashamed of it. Own that I never gave you cause to think—that you have been dreaming——"
"Hush. I am awake now," said the young man, slowly. And he turned his burning eyes upon her till she shrank, but this time neither from fear nor loathing; it was a new sensation which made itself disagreeably felt. Was she indeed as innocent as she said? Was there not a faint horrible suspicion of bluster in her fury of contempt and repudiation? She was silent, struggling with herself.
"You have broken my heart, I think," said Tommy, in the same slow, dull tone. "You have done what I was told you would do. You have played with me, as others of your kind have played with others of mine. God forgive you for your cruelty, but I—I am awake now,——" and again he muttered to himself like a man in a dream.
"Mr. Andrews, can you say?—stop, I suppose you can. Wait a moment; let me speak. I was lonely, unhappy, absorbed in myself and the empty weariness of my life when—when I met you. I read in your face that you—well, say it was my fault, say it was," suddenly impetuous—"at most it was but a passing folly, and it was over almost before it had begun. If it is any satisfaction to you now, I will say that I am—sorry. I can do no more."
"No, you can do no more. It is much for a great lady to go so far. It is the usual thing, I suppose;—" and again his mentor's words, "She was sorry, so sorry," echoed in the speaker's ears—"and the—the episode is at an end. Again I say God forgive you, Mrs. Stubbs, for I never can."