“I have,” returned Kate so quickly that he started.
“Well?” he asked, after waiting in vain for her to go on.
“I leave Mrs. Fair’s service on the first of next month,” quietly replied the governess, evidently with a quietness which cost her much, and as if bracing herself for the crisis of her life. “I have secured another position—with Lord Linklater’s family. I have advised Mrs. Fair already.”
“I’m glad of it—why, you look hurt. Fie!” taunted Fair. “Such virtue should be pleased, not hurt. The eternal feminine will out, though, always.”
“Pardon me,” retorted Kate stiffly, “I am heartily glad that you are glad. May I ask what has moved you to so commendable a frame of mind? If you had a conscience, I would say that it had at last awakened. Ah, I see—it was pride. What a mercy it is that when nature left conscience out of the aristocracy it supplied them with pride! Were it not for good form, how many gentlemen would there be? I congratulate you.”
“Go on,” urged Fair, settling back into his chair with the smile of amused superiority which he very often indulged in, contrary to his real feeling, to draw her out. “By Jove, you have enough cant to stock a whole meeting of dissenting old ladies. What a mercy it is, as you would put it, that when heaven forgot to endow young females with common sense, it gave them such a superabundance of pharisaical tommy-rot! If it were not for maiden aunts and governesses, how much talk of virtue—talk, I say—would there be in this naughty world?”
“It is well that there are some who, even by talking, remind men that there is, in theory at least, such a thing as honor,” replied Kate, with a sneaking notion that she was talking very platitudinous platitudes.
“Oh, entirely so,” drawled Fair sneeringly. “But isn’t it a pity that the milk of human kindness should be soured by the vinegar of puritanical self-righteousness? I promised you that I would not speak to you for three months. I have kept my promise. Now I am going to have my say—now, now, don’t fidget, I beg of you! A very different man is going to speak to you now from the one who said what I said to you on the deck of the sinking yacht that night. Do you remember, Miss Mettleby?”
“I wish that I could hope some day to forget it,” answered the girl, flaming scarlet.
Fair rose as if trying to control emotions that were shaking his foundations. “Don’t you see?” he burst out, confronting her; “don’t you see that your hopelessness in that connection is the result of only one possible cause? You love me.”