“I am unaccustomed to compliments,” she said, coldly. “And I did not mean to ask you to make allowance for me. No doubt my disadvantages incline you to do so—just as you would have excused my ignorance of French the first time I spoke to you. You have misunderstood me, Mr Cheviott. I am not ashamed of what I did, I only regret the ignorance of the world which made me trust to not being misunderstood.”
Again Mr Cheviott got up from his seat—this time more hastily.
“I wonder,” he said, in a low, constrained voice,—“I wonder, Miss Western, if you are anxious to make me unsay some of the words I just now, in all honesty, applied to you?”
Mary did not reply.
“I have my wish,” she said to herself, “I have succeeded in forcing him to be uncivil.”
And when her conscience smote her a little she silenced it by the old reflection that it was Lilias’s enemy with whom she was doing battle. What question could there be of hurting the feelings of the man who had done his best to break her darling’s heart?—who had even avowed his deliberate intention of destroying the happy prospects that might have been hers?