“About coming to see us at Romary, about, in fact, continuing to honour us with your acquaintanceship—I would like to say friendship, but I am afraid of vexing you—or the reverse.”
Mary pulled a poor primrose to pieces, petal by petal, before she replied.
“I wish,” she said, at last, with an appeal almost approaching to pathos in her tones, “I wish you had done as I begged you last night—let this last day end peacefully without rousing anything discordant. Mr Cheviott,” she went on, with an attempt at a smile, “you don’t know me. There are certain directions in which I feel so intensely that it would not take much to make me actually fierce—there is something of the Tartar underlying what you think cool self-possession—and one of those directions is my sister Lilias.” Her voice faltered a little. “Now won’t you be warned,” she added, speaking more lightly, “won’t you be warned, and let our pleasant truce last to the end?”
“To the end,” he repeated, with some bitterness. “A matter of a few hours, and, for the sake of keeping those peaceful, I am to relinquish my only chance of—of ever coming to a better understanding with you? No, Miss Western, I cannot let the subject drop thus.”
“Then what do you want to know?” she said, facing round upon him.
“I want to know if you keep to your determination never to come to see my sister at Romary, never to enter my house again, never, in fact, to have anything more to say to Alys, who is attached to you, and whom I know you care for? You may say she might come to see you, but at present, at any rate, that is impossible—besides, in such forced intercourse there could be no real enjoyment.”
“No,” said Mary, “there could not be. It is best to call things by their right names. I do care for Alys, deeply and truly, but I do not wish or intend to go on knowing her. I would not ask her to come to my home to see me, because I cannot go to her home to see her.”
“And why not?”
“Because she is your sister,” replied Mary, calmly. “And because I could not receive the hospitality of a man who has behaved as I believe you to have behaved.”
Mr Cheviott drew a step nearer her, and Mary, impelled, in spite of herself, to look up in his face, saw that it had grown to a deadly whiteness. She saw, too, something which she was half puzzled, half frightened at—something which in her short, peaceful experience of life, she had never come into close contact with—a strong man’s overwhelming indignation at unjust accusation. She stood silent. What could she say?