She does not answer, her eyes, into which the rain is beating under her umbrella brim, still fixed upon the empty road.
"Is she—is she apt to take cold?" he asks, his own tone catching the infection of her vague and nameless disquiet.
"Yes—no—not particularly, I think. Oh, it is not that!"—her composure breaking down into an unaffected outburst of distress. "It is not that! Do not you understand? Oh, how unwilling I was to come here to-day! It is—do not you see? Oh, I should not mind in the least if it had been you that were with her!"
"If it had been I that was with her?" repeats Jim slowly, not at the first instant comprehending, nor even at the second quite taking in the full, though unintentional, uncomplimentariness of this speech; which, however, before his companion again takes up her parable, has tinglingly reached—what? His heart, or only his vanity? They lie very close together.
"Why did not he go home with his mother?" pursues Mrs. Le Marchant, still in that voice of intense vexation. "It would have been so much more natural that he should, and I am sure that she wished it."
"You are making me feel extremely uncomfortable," says Burgoyne gravely; "when I remember that it was I who introduced him to you."
"Oh, I am not blaming you!" replies she, with an obvious effort to resume her usual courteous manner. "Please do not think that I am blaming you. How could you help it?"
"I thought you liked him."
"Oh, so I do—so we both do!" cries the poor woman agitatedly. "That is the worst of it! If I did not like him, I should not mind; at least, I should not mind half so much."
"I am very sorry," he begins; but she interrupts him.