“Very likely it is only a simple injury which will quickly heal,” said Falloden coldly. “Sorell has taken him up to town this afternoon to see the best man he can get. We shall know to-morrow, but there is really no reason to expect anything—dreadful.”
“How did it happen?”
“We tried to duck him in Neptune—the college fountain. There was a tussle, and his hand was cut by a bit of broken piping. You perhaps don’t know that he made a speech last week, attacking several of us in a very offensive way. The men in college got hold of it last night. A man who does that kind of thing runs risks.”
“He was only defending himself!” cried Constance. “He has been ragged, and bullied, and ill-treated—again and again—just because he is a foreigner and unlike the rest of you. And you have been the worst of any—you know you have! And I have begged you to let him alone! And if—if you had really been my friend—you would have done it—only to please me!”
“I happened to be more than your friend!”—said Falloden passionately. “Now let me speak out! You danced with Radowitz last night, dance after dance—so that it was the excitement, the event of the ball—and you did it deliberately to show me that I was nothing to you—nothing!—and he, at any rate, was something. Well!—I began to see red. You forget—that”—he spoke with difficulty—“my temperament is not exactly saintly. You have had warning, I think, of that often. When I got back to college, I found a group of men in the quad reading the skit in The New Oxonian. Suddenly Radowitz came in upon us. I confess I lost my head. Oh, yes, I could have stopped it easily. On the contrary, I led it. But I must ask you—because I have so much at stake!—was I alone to blame?—Was there not some excuse?—had you no part in it?”
He stood over her, a splendid accusing figure, and the excited girl beside him was bewildered by the adroitness with which he had carried the war into her own country.
“How mean!—how ungenerous!” Her agitation would hardly let her speak coherently. “When we were riding, you ordered me—yes, it was practically that!—you warned me, in a manner that nobody—nobody —has any right to use with me—unless he were my fiancé or my husband—that I was not to dance with Otto Radowitz—I was not to see so much of Mr. Sorell. So just to show you that I was really not at your beck and call—that you could not do exactly what you liked with me—I danced with Mr. Radowitz last night, and I refused to dance with you. Oh, yes, I know I was foolish—I daresay I was in a temper too—but how you can make that any excuse for your attack on that poor boy—how you can make me responsible, if—”
Her voice failed her. But Falloden saw that he had won some advantage, and he pushed on.
“I only want to point out that a man is not exactly a stock or a stone to be played with as you played with me last night. Those things are dangerous! Can you deny—that you have given me some reason to hope—since we met again—to hope confidently, that you might change your mind? Would you have let me arrange those rides for you—unknown to your friends—would you have met me in the woods, those heavenly times—would you have danced with me as you did—would you have let me pay you in public every sort of attention that a man can pay to a girl, when he wants to marry her, the night of the Marmion ball—if you had not felt something for me—if you had not meant to give me a little hope—to keep the thing at least uncertain? No!—if this business does turn out badly, I shall have remorse enough, God knows—but you can’t escape! If you punish me for it, if I alone am to pay the penalty, it will be not only Radowitz that has a grievance—not only Radowitz whose life will have been spoilt!”
She turned to him—hypnotised, subdued, by the note of fierce accusation—by that self-pity of the egotist—which looked out upon her from the young man’s pale face and tense bearing.