He supported her with his arms to a chair, in which he placed her; and was about to kneel upon the floor at her side, when she faintly said, "Felix! You forget Mr. Vronsky."
"By Jove!" said Felix, wheeling round. "But it doesn't matter. Come here, old man," he went on, "and hear the good news. Denzil has cut the knot for us. He has found a way out."
Vronsky, bewildered, said something very volubly in Russian.
"Yes, yes, I know all that," replied Felix, "but we found out the truth in our five-hundred-mile drive. I was right from the first. I always knew I was right. But it was natural that Rona should be bewildered. My brother had been conspicuously good to her, and it is not uncommon for a very young girl to mistake gratitude for love. But this is not gratitude—is it, Rona?"
On the last words his voice dropped to a lower key and shook with intensity. Rona let him take her hand, and with devotion he raised it to his lips.
"Felix," she urged, almost in a whisper, for she was profoundly shaken, "we did keep faith, did we not?"
"Thanks to you, not to me, we did," he replied thankfully.
She laughed a little hysterically. "I have just been explaining to Mr. Vronsky how impossible it all is," she cried. "Of all the women that I could not imagine Denzil to be in love with.—I always thought it was you, Felix!"
"It might have been," put in Vronsky. "Felix might have been her favored suitor, had he so willed."
"That cannot be said, since such a thing was never contemplated by me," replied Felix, promptly.