A few plain words in that note of Hetty's roused feelings of varying kinds in Captain Jack's breast. He could not help respecting the writer for her straightforwardness, but anger, fear, and dislike were in equal proportions.
It was dreadfully mortifying to have been refused by any girl, but doubly so when the individual was such as Hetty Stapleton, and mortification produced anger and dislike also when he thought of her. Her quiet good sense and plain speaking inspired fear, lest Hetty should, in the future, interfere to prevent his success in another quarter. With such feelings, it may well be imagined that Hetty Stapleton was about the last person Captain Jack wished to see at Hollingsby for any length of time.
It was quite in accordance with Miss Stapleton's downright way of doing things, that she should speak to Aylmer Matheson about what had set all the village tongues going a few hours before.
"I am so sorry," she said, "that any mischance should have given people the power to couple the names of John Torrance and Kathleen. One feels sure that, so far as she was concerned, the meeting was unexpected and the companionship on the road a thing that a girl like Kitty would not know how to prevent. You see, she is not like me. She is so lovely and lovable, so fearful of hurting anybody's feelings, that she would be helpless to send a man like that to the rightabout, though his presence might be distasteful."
"I quite agree with you that to Kathleen the meeting was unexpected, for she, in common with the rest of us, believed that Captain Torrance was absent from the neighbourhood. I wish I could as easily believe that his company was distasteful, but had you met the two as I did, you, like me, would have doubted this. Torrance's face was full of triumph, and the mocking laugh I heard just before I reached them, together with Kathleen's amused face, told a different tale."
"And of course you were as self-conscious as most of us would be under similar circumstances. You took it for granted that you were the subject of John Torrance's jest, and that Kathleen enjoyed it, and joined in the laughter. Excuse my calling the man by his Christian name to you."
"He is not entitled to be called captain, though everybody uses the appellation. But I hate shams, and I will not insult the army by pretending that he belongs to it, after having left it perforce."
"Now, about the man's laugh. I am quite certain that he wished to annoy you by it and his whole manner. But that Kathleen would ever join in aught, whether word, deed, or gesture, that savoured of mockery towards yourself, I will not for a moment believe. She is one of the most impulsive, and, as a consequence, one of the most self-tormenting creatures on this earth, but she is true. Have I not heard her again and again speak of you in terms of the warmest esteem, and express her thankfulness that her father had chosen such a guardian for her? She could not be so false to her own generous nature as to join a man like John Torrance in holding you up to ridicule, with a view of wilfully causing you pain. Kitty is incapable of acting a lie."
Even in the dim light of the early winter's evening Hetty could see how Aylmer's face brightened under the influence of her cheery words. He believed them, and blamed himself for his over-sensitiveness in all wherein Kathleen was concerned.
"You have done me good, Hetty, by your common-sense words, and I have wronged Kathleen by my hasty judgment. God knows how I long to shield her from harm! and here am I judging her without a hearing, blaming her so that you need to be her champion, and all because she laughed at the idle words of a man who had forced his society upon her."