Honor's anger flamed up and overflowed.
"Oh, Evelyn, how can you behave like that to him!"
Still no answer; only, after a short silence, Evelyn rose and faced her friend. Then Honor saw that her cheeks were wet and her eyes brimming with tears.
It is to be feared that her first sensation was one of pure annoyance. Evelyn thoroughly deserved a scolding: and here she was, as usual, disarming rebuke by her genuine distress.
"Now, I suppose he'll go—and get killed!" she said, in a choked voice.
"My dear child, what nonsense! He'll come back safe enough. You don't deserve that he should be so patient with you—you don't indeed!"
Evelyn looked up at her with piteous drowned eyes, whose expression had the effect of making Honor feel altogether in the wrong.
"He shouldn't have made such disagreeable remarks about me and the Kresneys, then," she said brokenly. "All the same, I wanted to speak to him. But—I was crying, and I couldn't make a scene—with you there. And now—if anything happens to him, and—I never see him again,—it'll be all your fault!"