“I suppose that I ought not to have told even you,” she continues, resisting with mild doggedness her young friend’s attempt to distract her thoughts, even momentarily, from her woes—not having, indeed, a mind hospitable enough often to admit two ideas abreast within its narrow portals. “No; I suppose that I certainly ought not to have revealed our disgrace even to you; but what was I to do? I had to tell some one—to seek for sympathy somewhere. I get none at home. I suppose that Mr. Prince feels it; but he says nothing. He is like a stone.”
“I am sure that he feels it.”
Something emphatic in the low-voiced assertion of her husband’s sensibility, by one who has not the advantage of relationship to him, grates on the rasped nerves of the poor wife.
“I never said that he did not feel it!” she cries in tart wretchedness. “Of course he feels it. He would not be human if he did not!”
Lavinia assents with a motion of the head, quite as emphatic as her former asseveration of Mr. Prince’s sufferings.
“And if I had not told you”—answering the accusation of disloyalty brought by herself against herself, with as much defensive exasperation as if it had been proffered by her companion—“Féo would have done so herself! She sees nothing to be ashamed of. She glories in it!”
“Glories in it!”
“Yes, glories in it! incredible as it seems. But I wish, dear”—with a fretful relief in finding an object on which to vent her exquisite nerve-irritation—“that you would not repeat my words after me when you hear them perfectly.”
“It is a stupid trick”—speaking with absolute and effortless good temper. “I think I do it without knowing.”
“You are a good creature!” cries the other, seizing her companion’s fingers with one hand, and with the other applying a very expensive pocket-handkerchief to the eyes that are swimming in mortified tears. “To-day I can’t help snapping my best friend’s nose off!”