“And we all felt that you would have changed places with him if you could, wouldn’t you?”
The surface motive of the speech is the kind and Christian one of bringing comfort to a spirit that she divines to be as sorely wounded as the brave body that holds it; but underneath there lurks another, scarcely known even to herself. It is the question she had put to Rupert two months ago—to Rupert, the unblushing candour of whose answering negative had given her one of those accesses of repulsion towards him, which for the future it will be a crime for her to indulge. A feverish and senseless curiosity prompts her to repeat it now.
“Yes, I would.”
There is no asseveration to strengthen the assent; yet it carries a conviction as deep—nay, much deeper, for she had tried not to believe the latter—than Rupert’s confession that he would much rather not have died for his brother. Retribution speedily overtakes her, in the sting of sudden pain caused by the contrast she herself has brought out, into salience; and conscious of the unworthiness of her double motive, she finds herself unable to bear the gratitude of his eyes. They are hazel, and have eagleish yellow lights in them, as one part of herself tells another part some time after she has left him.
“It was such a strange coincidence that I should be sent here!” he says presently, moving his languid head so that he may get a better view of her, for she has sat down again, a little way off; “that I, of all people, should be the first result of Miss Prince’s request to General —— at Canterbury to have some of us to nurse. When I realized what neighbourhood it was that I was to be brought to—when I heard that you were near neighbours, I had almost given it up at the last moment!”
“We should have been sorry for that.”
There is a measured reassuring kindness in her words; but he feels suddenly chilled. It must strike her own ears as too measured; for she adds—
“We should have liked to have had you ourselves; my uncle has said so repeatedly; but we have no appliances! We could not have made you nearly so comfortable as you are here!”
His eyes, large with leanness, roll round the spacious airiness of the apartment.
“I am in the lap of luxury!” he says; but though there is gratitude in his tone, enthusiasm is absent.