“Then you need not trouble to tell me the young lady’s name,” said Michael, quickly, “which, to my mind, is always preferable in such circumstances. But taking that for known, what is it you want to consult me about? How can you—” He stopped short.
“Perhaps she has given you no encouragement to go further?”
A shade of irritation darkened Bernard’s face.
“On the contrary—” he began. Then he, too, stopped short. He had no wish to pose as a fat, even to Michael. “We need not enter into that part of it,” he said, composedly. “The thing is this, and, as you like plain speaking, you must not turn upon me, and call me coarse, or unchivalrous, or anything of that kind—the facts are these: I left Cannes all but decided in my own mind to—to—well, to go through with it. But circumstances delayed my return home, or, rather I should say, my return to my usual life. I was so busy about that canvassing business. And, on the whole, I thought it was just as well; I wanted to think it all over. Well, soon I was at leisure again; one day in London, when I was just considering how best to proceed, not having cooled upon it, I met some people you too know. The Worthings.”
Michael crushed up a sheet of paper lying on the table by his hand.
“Indeed,” he said. “And what about that? Has Mrs Worthing not relinquished her hopes for the fair Aline—poor little soul—and is she waxing spiteful?”
“She is far too clever to show her spite, whether she feels it or not,” said Mr Gresham. “And she is too cautious to state anything distinctly untrue. I can’t make it out. With all reasonable allowance for her—well, spitefulness is as good a word as any—I cannot understand her saying what she has done, unless—unless she has some facts to back her?”
“What did she say?” asked Michael, and he threw the ball of crushed paper into the fire, with a sort of fierceness.
“She said—” began Bernard. Then he got up and walked up and down the room. “Upon my soul,” he went on, “it’s awfully difficult to tell. It was so vague—just enough to be horribly annoying and upsetting, and—”
“People have no right—no right whatever—to be vague in mischief-making,” said Michael, angrily. “And mischief-making I infer that it was. She spoke ‘vaguely’ against Miss—no, I won’t name her. Why, in heaven’s name, did you not bring the woman to book?”