“I suppose Eustace would do it for me,” drearily. “He would if he thought it was the proper thing. He always does the proper thing.”
“I wish you wouldn’t talk in such a horrid voice. It makes me feel creepy. And I don’t think it’s fair to say that sort of thing about the Commissioner. He’s perfectly devoted to you, and you know it would break his heart to have to—do what we were talking about. I don’t believe you’re half as fond of him as he is of you.”
“Have you found that out now for the first time?”
“Then it’s a shame!” cried Flora. “Why do you let him think you care for him? He worships you, and you pretend——”
“I don’t pretend. He took it into his head that I cared for him, and wouldn’t let me say I didn’t. And he doesn’t worship me. He thinks that I shall make a nice adoring sort of worshipper for him when he has got me well in hand.”
“Well, I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself!” said Flora crushingly.
“You needn’t be horrid. I’m sure I have quite enough to bear as it is. What with thinking every morning when I wake that I shall have to be pleasant to him whenever he chooses to come and talk to me all day, when I should like to be at the other end of the world——”
“What do you mean to do when you are married?”
Mabel shivered. “I don’t know,” she said. “I rather hope we shall be killed instead.”
“You needn’t expect to get out of difficulties in that way. If you want to be killed, you are quite sure not to be. And to go on living a lie——”