“Mr Cheviott,” said Mary, impulsively, “whatever you are, you have behaved most generously to me. It was very good of you to come to papa—after—after all I said.”
“Thank you,” he said in a low voice.
“I wish,” she added, as if speaking to herself, “I wish I could understand you. I hate to do any one injustice.”
“And what if you found that you had done such to me?” he asked, eagerly.
“Of course I would own myself in the wrong, if I saw that I had been,” she replied, proudly, and Mr Cheviott could feel that her head was thrown back with the gesture peculiar to her at times.
“And then?”
“You would—you would forgive me, I suppose,” she said, lightly, but with a slight nervousness in her voice. Mr Cheviott was silent. Mary seemed impelled to go on speaking. “On the whole,” she said, “I think I shall register your kindness to-night as an act of great generosity. Will that do better?”
“As you please,” Mr Cheviott replied, dryly, but, it seemed to Mary, sadly too. And she was right.
“How can she ever see that she did me injustice?” he was saying to himself. “I can never explain things—it is madness to imagine I can ever be cleared.”
Andrew’s report was most satisfactory. Dr Brandreth had just come in and would start at once. The order for his dog-cart had been sent out while the man stood at the door.