‘Mr. Bertie, there is something I have wished to say to you ever since Ombra came back. I did you a great deal of injustice. I want to make an apology.’
‘An apology!—to me!’
‘Yes, to you. I don’t know that I ever did anybody so much wrong. I do not want to blame Bertie Eldridge. It is all right now, I suppose; but I thought once that you were her——’
Bertie Hardwick turned quickly round upon her, as if in resentment; his gesture felt like a moral blow. Wounded surprise and resentment—was it resentment? And somehow, though the white moonlight did not show it, Kate felt that she blushed.
‘Please don’t be angry. I am confessing that I was wrong; and I never felt that you could have done it,’ said Kate, in a low voice. ‘I believed it, and yet I did not believe it. That was the sting. To think you could have so little faith in me—could have deceived me, when we are such old friends!’
‘And was that all?’ he said. ‘Was it only the concealment you thought me incapable of?’
‘The concealment was the only thing wicked about it, I suppose,’ said Kate, ‘now that it has turned out all right.’
Bertie took no notice of the unconscious humour of this definition. He turned to her again with a certain vehemence, which seemed to have some anger in it.
‘Nay,’ he said, almost sharply, ‘there was more than that. You knew I did not love Ombra—you knew she was nothing to me.’
‘I did not—know—anything about it,’ faltered Kate.