His voice changed. She said nothing for a little, and her hands still made a penthouse for her face.
At last she threw him a question.
'Just now—what happened?'
'Good Heavens, as if I knew!' he said, with a cry of distress. 'I tried to tell her how I had gone up and down Italy, seeking for her, hungering for any shred of news of you. And she?—she treated me like a troublesome intruder, like a dog that follows you unasked and has to be beaten back with your stick!'
Eleanor smiled a little. His heart and his vanity had been stabbed alike.
Certainly he had something to complain of.
She dropped her hands, and drew herself erect.
'Well, yes,' she said in a meditative voice, 'we must think—we must see.'
As she sat there, rapt in a sudden intensity of reflection, the fatal transformation in her was still more plainly visible; Manisty could hardly keep his eyes from her. Was it his fault? His poor, kind Eleanor! He felt the ghastly tribute of it, felt it with impatience, and repulsion. Must a man always measure his words and actions by a foot-rule—lest a woman take him too seriously? He repented; and in the same breath told himself that his penalty was more than his due.
At last Eleanor spoke.
'I must return a moment to what we said before. Lucy Foster's ways, habits, antecedents are wholly different from yours. Suppose there were a chance for you. You would take her to London—expect her to play her part there—in your world. Suppose she failed. How would you get on?'