“She loves Basil with all her heart, and she’s desperately unhappy.” He looked steadily at Mrs. Murray, and dropped his voice, so that it seemed no sound issued from his mouth; but Hilda heard every word so emphatically that it struck her heart as though with a hammer. “She asked me to give you a message. She knows that Basil—loves you, and she begs you to have mercy on her.”
For a moment Hilda could not reply.
“Don’t you think it’s rather impertinent of you to say such things to me?” she returned, uttering the words disjointedly, as though she forced them out one by one.
“Excessively,” he answered. “And I wouldn’t have ventured only she told me her love was like music in her heart, and something prevented it from ever coming out. It seemed to me that for a rather stupid, narrow, common woman to have got hold of a thought like that she must have gone through a perfect hell of suffering. And I was sorry.”
“And d’you think I’ve not suffered?”
Hilda could not preserve that mask of cold decorum. The question thrilled from her, and she had no power to leave it unasked.
“Are you very fond of him?”
“No, I’m not fond of him. I worship the very ground he treads on.”
Frank held out his hand to say good-bye.
“Then you must do as you think fit. You’re playing the most dangerous game in the world; you’re playing with human hearts. . . . Forgive me for what I’ve said.”