Out shot Dorothea's arm, and Lettice, amazed, aggrieved, found herself being vigorously shaken.
"Do not talk like that! I never in my life knew any one so—so perfectly systematically untruthful as you are! I don't believe you've once this morning said one single thing you really mean!" (But she was wrong, for Lettice had done so—once.) "Tell me what you think of Mr. Gardiner. Tell me. I want to know."
Lettice, chafing her arm, mutely reproachful, indicated the creases which Dorothea's grip had left on her pale blue linen sleeve. "You, you, you—you are so violent," she complained in her pianissimo drawl, which held always a hint of make-believe. "I don't know what you mean. I do think Mr. Gardiner is very nice." Then for the second time she let out a little piece of truth. "I shouldn't think he'd take failure well."
"Oh."
Abrupt silence. Dorothea sprang up and wandered off into the forest, slashing at the brambles with her stick, jumping over logs that came in her way, just as a boy might have done. Indeed she looked like a boy in her rough tweeds and Norfolk coat, with her brown face and well-scratched hands. She had worn neither hat nor gloves since she came.
Lettice looked at her with shrewd and wideawake curiosity. She and Denis, pooling their observations, had been following the hidden course of Gardiner's love affair. So circumspectly had the pair behaved that not a soul in the hotel, except the two allies, had any inkling of the romance in progress. Yet it was serious enough, at any rate for Gardiner. He was in it up to the neck; no doubt about him. And Dorothea? Denis was of opinion that she meant business. Hadn't Lettice seen the expression (love-light was the word in his mind, but he didn't like to use it) in her eyes?
Lettice had always had her doubts as to that love-light, though she kept them to herself. This morning they had become certainty. Dorothea did not love Harry Gardiner—it was not love which had looked out of those too-clear eyes of hers when she asked that imperious question. No! Lettice had been illuminated by the certainty that he was the man whom, on her own showing, she had singled out to hate. Dorothea could hate, no doubt of that. The plain black and white of her emotions, love and hate, rapture and agony, they were somewhat startling in a world of neutral grays.
But at this point Lettice found herself up against a blank wall. What was Gardiner's offense, and how did it happen that he did not know it himself? For he did not know; and Dorothea was planning her attack against a man who had thrown away his armor for love of her. This was not sporting. Lettice always instinctively took sides with the weak against the strong, with the victim against the avenger. Besides, she liked Gardiner. She liked Dorothea too—with reservations; but her character was simpler, more homogeneous, easier to follow. She, in fact, was interesting historically, but not analytically. Now the uncertain balance of strength and weakness in Gardiner made him an engrossing study. He was transparent to Lettice, while she was opaque to him. "That inoffensive but very ordinary little person"—so he had called her: what a pity he could not look into her mind!
Thus Lettice abandoned the study of the passive of amo for its active voice. In the midst of her cogitations she was surprised to see Denis come in view, striding through the bracken. He sometimes called for her on his way back from the river, but now he was approaching from the direction of the hotel. Moreover, gloom sat upon his brow.
"I say, Lettice," he called out, the Irish accent unusually strong, "isn't it a nawful nuisance? Wandesforde's had a smash-up in his car, and he wants me back at once!"