“What high road, in Heaven’s name?” I asked.
“Why, his duty, of course. Don’t you see, it was there she was sitting waiting for him. It led him straight to her. She saw that, and that he couldn’t miss her. He had only got to take the train to his sister when she was dying and he would have found his lady there. That was what she meant when she said the road was open between them. But he went down a side track to flirt with me and lost his chance. And the second time, if he had only stuck to going to the rescue of his foster brother, he could have given her a lift in his motor as Anna did, and have made himself known to her.”
“What a preposterously goody-goody idea! I don’t believe it for a moment. Here have I been doing my duty for the last ten years, toiling and moiling and snarling at everybody, and it never led me to you that I can see.”
“It might have done,” said Mildred, “if you hadn’t been entirely compacted of pride and uncharitableness. I made a mistake ten years ago, and was horribly sorry for it, but you never gave me a chance of setting it right till last Tuesday.”
“I never thought I had the ghost of a chance till last Tuesday,” I said. “Upon my honour I didn’t. The first moment I saw it I simply pounced on it.”
“Pounced on it, did you?” said Mildred scornfully “And poor me, with hardly a rag of self-respect left from laying it in your way over and over again for you to pounce on. Men are all alike; all as blind as bats. I’m sure I don’t know why we trouble our heads about them with their silly ghosts and chances and pouncings.”
[The Goldfish]
A Favourite has no Friends.