“I have been cruelly provoked, Mr. Delamayn,” she answered. “But I have no right to plead that.” She looked up at him for a moment. The hot tears of shame gathered in her eyes, and fell slowly over her cheeks. She bent her head again, and hid them from him. “The only atonement I can make,” she said, “is to ask your pardon, and to leave the house.”
In silence, she turned away to the door. In silence, Julius Delamayn paid her the trifling courtesy of opening it for her. She went out.
Mrs. Glenarm’s indignation—suspended for the moment—transferred itself to Julius.
“If I have been entrapped into seeing that woman, with your approval,” she said, haughtily, “I owe it to myself, Mr. Delamayn, to follow her example, and to leave your house.”
“I authorized her to ask you for an interview, Mrs. Glenarm. If she has presumed on the permission that I gave her, I sincerely regret it, and I beg you to accept my apologies. At the same time, I may venture to add, in defense of my conduct, that I thought her—and think her still—a woman to be pitied more than to be blamed.”
“To be pitied did you say?” asked Mrs. Glenarm, doubtful whether her ears had not deceived her.
“To be pitied,” repeated Julius.
“You may find it convenient, Mr. Delamayn, to forget what your brother has told us about that person. I happen to remember it.”
“So do I, Mrs. Glenarm. But, with my experience of Geoffrey—” He hesitated, and ran his fingers nervously over the strings of his violin.
“You don’t believe him?” said Mrs. Glenarm.