The woman was cruel, remorseless,—for she felt Joyce’s arm vibrate in her clasp, which she could not loosen,—and thus commanded her secrets, and forced her to betray herself. The girl felt herself driven to bay.
‘I don’t understand—the things you say,’ she answered slowly at last. ‘You speak as if I had a power—a power—that I know nothing about. And oh, you’re cruel, cruel! to put all that in my mind. What—do you think I can do?’
‘Oh, Joyce, I knew you would never fail me. You have such a generous heart. Let him see, only let him see, that between him and you there can be nothing. He will accept it quickly enough. A man’s pride is soon up in arms. It has only been a passing fancy, and he will soon see that everything is against it; while everything is in favour of the other. If you will only be firm, and let him see—oh, Joyce, you who are so clever! dear Joyce!’
Joyce’s heart swelled almost to bursting. ‘You call me clever, and dear,’ she cried; ‘and you tell me I must save Greta’s heart from breaking; but what if I were to break mine,—and what if I were to hurt his,—and what if I were to make three miserable instead of one? You never think of that.’
‘No,’ cried Mrs. Bellendean, with a tone of indignation; ‘because I would never do you that wrong, Joyce,—you that are honour itself and the soul of truth,—to believe that you had even a thought of Norman, being engaged to another man.’
Joyce shrank as if she had received a blow. ‘Oh,’ she cried, in a broken voice, ‘you never ceased to say that I had done wrong—that it was not a fit thing for me—that I would change, that I would find it not possible to keep my word. You said so—not I.’
‘My dear! my dear!’ cried Mrs. Bellendean.
‘No,’ said Joyce, ‘don’t call me so. I am not dear any more. You know that there was a time when Joyce would do what you said, if it was small or great, if it was to give you a flower or to give you her heart; and then you changed, and that ceased to be; and we got all wrong because I was Colonel Hayward’s daughter. And now you come and put me back again in my old place, but far, far lower—the girl engaged to Andrew Halliday, whom you never could bear to hear of—and bid me do what may be, perhaps, for all you know, a heartbreak to me——’
‘No, Joyce—no, dear Joyce!’
‘For what?’ she said sadly—‘that you may call me that—you that raised me up to your arms, for being not myself but my father’s daughter—and now drop me down, down again, for fear I should come in your way. And why should I break my heart more than Greta? why should I be disappointed and not she? why should I give up my hope to save her—if it was so?’