“I might have done no such thing. I gave you my opinion. Elfride Swancourt may have loved you once, no doubt, but it was when she was so young that she hardly knew her own mind.”
“Thank you,” said Stephen laconically. “She knew her mind as well as I did. We are the same age. If you hadn’t interfered——”
“Don’t say that—don’t say it, Stephen! How can you make out that I interfered? Be just, please!”
“Well,” said his friend, “she was mine before she was yours—you know that! And it seemed a hard thing to find you had got her, and that if it had not been for you, all might have turned out well for me.” Stephen spoke with a swelling heart, and looked out of the window to hide the emotion that would make itself visible upon his face.
“It is absurd,” said Knight in a kinder tone, “for you to look at the matter in that light. What I tell you is for your good. You naturally do not like to realize the truth—that her liking for you was only a girl’s first fancy, which has no root ever.”
“It is not true!” said Stephen passionately. “It was you put me out. And now you’ll be pushing in again between us, and depriving me of my chance again! My right, that’s what it is! How ungenerous of you to come anew and try to take her away from me! When you had won her, I did not interfere; and you might, I think, Mr. Knight, do by me as I did by you!”
“Don’t ‘Mr.’ me; you are as well in the world as I am now.”
“First love is deepest; and that was mine.”
“Who told you that?” said Knight superciliously.
“I had her first love. And it was through me that you and she parted. I can guess that well enough.”