Here and there during this speech Roma had softened a little to her would-be lover, had even pitied him a little when it dawned upon her that the truth she had no option now but to tell him in unmistakable words might after all cause him some real pain: but the confident belief in the irresistible nature of his own charms, calmly inferred in his closing words, provoked her out of such weakness. She felt no difficulty now in hardening her heart.
“How you have got your knowledge, Beauchamp, of what passed between Gertrude and me to-day certainly baffles my comprehension; but, however you have done so, you must allow me to tell you that it is a very garbled version of the real conversation that has come to you,” began Roma.
“I don’t believe it,” interrupted the young man, hotly. “You are trying to mystify me again. Can you deny that Gertrude’s interference has gone the length of driving you from Winsley while I am there?”
“Certainly I deny it,” she replied. “It is perfectly true that Gertrude and I agreed together that it would not be unadvisable for me to leave Winsley for a time.”
“For the time of my being there?” he interrupted again.
“Well, yes, if you force me to say so, that was the time we proposed for my absence. But Gertrude was not the originator of the plan. It was my own wish.”
“Indeed!” he said, incredulously. “And if not to propitiate Gertrude, what on earth was your motive?”
“The foolish one,” she returned, getting very angry, “of wishing to spare myself the pain of saying, and you the pain—or rather, perhaps, I should say, the mortification, of hearing what I would much rather never have been driven to put into words.”
“And what may that be?” he asked, growing paler than was his wont, but with a sneer on his face that made Roma, in her exaggerated indignation, marvel that ever she could have thought him handsome.
“The truth,” she replied, vehemently, “the plain state of the case—namely, that there is one woman who does not think you irresistible; who would not marry you, hardly, I think, to save her life; who pities the woman that does marry you—vain, selfish, shallow as you are!” She stopped, breathless with excitement.