‘But you know he always liked you, Philip, and you must have done something—something awfully bad to have made him turn so suddenly against you.’
But although she tried to make him believe that she was quite sure he had done something very wicked, she somehow failed to impress the youth with any deep sense of her indignation.
‘I cannot measure the degree of my iniquity until you give me some hint as to what it is.’
‘Don’t you know?’
‘On my honour I do not. My conscience is as clear of it as your own. Now speak—tell me my crime.’
‘If you don’t know what it is,’ she said slowly, whilst she studied intently a weed that had grown in the path and which now sprouted at her restless foot. ‘If you really don’t know what it is—I think we had better say nothing about it.’
‘Very well and with all my heart. Still I can’t help thinking that your uncle might have come to me, or allowed me to go to him, before he made up his mind that we should never pull together.’
‘He did not say that exactly’——
‘Would you have believed him if he had?’ he interrupted, with an under-current of laughter in his voice and yet with a shade of curiosity in his expression.
She looked at him. That was enough. The pale blue eyes, which seemed in extreme lights quite gray, had that wistful, trustful expression of a dog when being chidden by a loved master for some offence of which it is innocent. But presently the expression changed to one of thoughtfulness, the flush faded from her cheek, and she again sought inspiration from the weed at her foot.