“I do not believe that was your meaning, or that you were thinking about me at all.”
“And what if it were not? Am I bound, I pray you, to be thinking of nothing but you? I must have little enough to think of, if it were so.”
“You might at least have told me so much frankly.”
“I thank you, cousin Durzil,” she made answer, more proudly, more firmly than ever he had heard her speak before. “I thank you, for teaching me a lesson, though neither very kindly, nor exactly as a generous gentleman should teach a lady. But you are perfectly correct in your surmises, sir. I was not thinking of you at all; no more, sir, than if you were not in existence, and if I answered you, as I did, sir, falsely—yes! falsely is the word!—it is because, in the first place, you had no right to ask me the question you did, and, in the second, because I did not choose to answer it! Now, cousin, allow me to teach you something—for you have something yet to learn, wise as you are, about us women. If you ask a lady unmannerly questions, hereafter, and she turn them off by a flippant joke, or an unmeaning falsehood, understand that you have been very rude, and that she does not wish to be so likewise, by rebuking your impertinence. Now, do you comprehend me?”
“Perfectly, madam, perfectly. You have made marvelous strides of late, upon my honor! Yesterday morning an unsophisticated country maiden—this morning a courtly, quick-witted, manœuvring, fine lady! God send you, much good of the change, though I doubt it. I can see all, read all, plainly enough now—poor Durzil Bras-de-fer is not high enough, I trow, for my dainty lady! Perchance, when he is farther off, he may be better liked, and more needed. At all events, I did not look for this at your hands, Theresa, on the last morning, too, that we shall spend together for so long a time.”
Angry as she was, and indignant at the dictatorial manner he had assumed toward her, these last words disarmed her in a moment. A tear rose to her eyes, and she held out her hand to him kindly.
“You are right, Durzil,” she said, “and I was wrong to be so angry. But you vexed me, and wounded me by your manner. I am sorry; I ought to have remembered that you were going to leave us, and that you have some cause to be grieved and irritable. Pardon me, Durzil, and forget what I said hastily. We must not quarrel, for we have no friends save one another, and my dear old father.”
But Durzil’s was no placable mind, nor one that could divest itself readily of a preconceived idea. “Oh!” he replied, “for that, fair young ladies never lack friends. For every old one they cast off they win two new ones. See, if it be not so, Theresa. Is it not so with you?”
She looked at him reproachfully, but softly, and then burst into tears. “You are ungenerous,” she said, “ungenerous. But all men, I suppose, are alike in this—that they can feel no friendship for a woman. So long as they hope for her love, all is submission on their part, and humility, and gentleness, and lip-service—once they cannot win that, all is bitterness and persecution. I did not look for this at your hand! But I will not quarrel with you, Durzil. I dealt frankly with you yester morning; I have dealt affectionately with you ever; I will deal tenderly and forgivingly with you now. I only wish that you had not sought this interview with me, the only object of which appears to have been the embittering the last hours of our intercourse, and the endeavoring to wring and wound my heart. But I—”
“If you had dealt frankly with me,” he interrupted her, very angrily, “you would have told me honestly that you loved another.”