His stupefaction deepens.
"Mrs. Byng—Mrs. Byng told you that I was sick of you? Sick to death of you?"
"Oh, no," she cries, even her emotion giving way to her eagerness to correct this misapprehension, "she did not tell me so! How could you imagine such a thing? She is far, far too kind-hearted; she would not hurt a fly intentionally, and would be exceedingly pained if she thought I had overheard her."
He shrugs his shoulders despairingly.
"Je m'y perds! She told you, and she did not tell you; you heard, and you did not hear."
"I am telling it very stupidly, I know," she says apologetically, "very confusedly; and of course I can't expect you to understand by instinct how it was." She sighs profoundly, and then goes on quickly, and no longer looking at him. "You know she took me to the party, but when we reached the villa, I found that she knew so many people, and I so few, that I should only be a burden to her if I kept continually by her side, and as I was rather tired—you know that I had not been in bed for two or three nights—I thought I would go into the house and rest, so as to be quite fresh by the time you came. I fancied it was not unlikely you might be a little late."
His conscience, at the unintentional reproach of this patient supposition, reminds him of its existence by a sharp prick. How many times has her poor vanity suffered the bruise of being long first at the rendezvous?
"I discovered that chair by the window under the curtain, the one where you found me."
"Well?"
"It was so quiet there, as everybody was in the garden, that I suppose I fell asleep; at least I remember nothing more until suddenly I heard Mrs. Byng's voice saying——"