“You mean that you will turn from me altogether?”
“Am I not plain enough? I can be plainer if you like. You shall go out of this house and go where you will. I do not care where you go. But you are forgetting that I have some curiosity. I wish to understand what has happened to you since you wrote your letter. That is excusable, surely.”
“It is Logie,” said he. “He has made it impossible for me. I cannot cheat a man who has given me all his confidence.”
“He gave you his confidence?” cried Madam Flemington. “Heavens! He is well served, that stage-puppet Prince, when his servants confide in the first stranger they meet! Captain Logie must be a man of honour!”
“He is,” said Archie. “It was his own private confidence he gave me. I heard his own history from his own lips, and, knowing it, I cannot go on deceiving him. I like him too much.”
Madam Flemington was confounded. The difficulty seemed so strangely puerile. A whim, a fancy, was to ruin the work of years and turn everything upside down. On the top, she was exasperated with Archie, but underneath, it was worse. She found her influence and her power at stake, and her slave was being wrested from her, in spite of every interest which had bound them together. She loved him with a jealous, untender love that was dependent on outward circumstances, and she was proud of him. She had smiled at his devotion to her as she would have smiled with gratified comprehension at the fidelity of a favourite dog, understanding the creature’s justifiable feeling, and knowing how creditable it was to its intelligence.
“What has all this to do with your duty?” she demanded.
“My duty is too hard,” he cried. “I cannot do it, grandmother!”
“Too hard!” she exclaimed. “Pah! you weary me—you disgust me. I am sick of you, Archie!”