“The clemency of your sentiments in regard to Mrs. Farrell is a continual surprise to me, Susan, when I remember what an outfit you gave her the time we first talked of her,” said Gilbert.
“Oh, you can easily convict me of inconsistency on any point,” answered his sister-in-law. “But why shouldn’t I see a change for the better in her? Why shouldn’t I sincerely believe her capable of nobler things than I once did?”
“You have all the reasons in the world; and if you had none, still, optimism is amiable. But really, do you know this is getting very tiresome? Am I to spend all my leisure moments with you in philosophizing Mrs. Farrell? I’m willing to take any version of her that you give me. How can I doubt her devotion to Easton when I see her getting ready to knit him a smoking-cap? I know she’s sorry for having made that misunderstanding between him and me, for she said she was. Who wouldn’t believe a handsome young woman when she says she’s sorry? Perhaps another handsome young woman. Not I.”
“Now you’re talking in a very silly, cynical way, William, and you’d better say good morning, and come again when you’re in a different mood.”
“I’m willing enough to say good morning,” returned Gilbert, and went.
He went by an attraction which he could not resist to Easton’s room, and experienced again that heartquake with which he now always met his friend’s eye, and which he was always struggling to prevent or avert. It was a thing which his nerves might be reasoned out of, with due thought, and it did not come, when he was once in Easton’s presence and confronted him from time to time. But in the morning, when their eyes first met, or after any little absence, the shock was inevitable; and he knew, though he would not own it to himself, that he had been trying somehow to shun the encounter. The bitterest rage he had felt against his friend was bliss to this fear of the trust he saw in Easton’s face. He could best endure it when he could meet him in Mrs. Farrell’s presence. In the gay talk which he held with them together he could persuade himself that the harmless pleasure of the moment was all. He found a like respite when alone with her. He did not pretend to himself that he tried to avoid her; he knew that he sought her with feverish eagerness; now and then in the pauses of her voice a haggard consciousness blotted his joy in her charm, but when he parted from her he was sensible of a stupid and craven apprehension, as if the fascination of her presence were also a safeguard beyond which he could not hope for mercy from himself. At such times it was torture to meet Rachel Woodward, and the shy friendship which had sprung up between them died of this pain. His haunting inward blame seemed to look at him again from her clear eyes; he accused himself in the tones of her voice; she confronted him like an outer conscience, even when her regard seemed explicitly to refuse intelligence of what was in his heart.
At dinner, that day, Mrs. Farrell was very bright-eyed and rather subdued; she looked like a woman who had been having a cry. She talked amiably with everybody, as was now her wont, and when she found herself, late in the afternoon, again on the piazza with Gilbert, she said, “You’re sorry, I suppose.”
“Not the least,” he answered, with nervous abruptness. “Why should I be sorry? Because you made an outrageous speech to me?”
“You are rather a vindictive person, aren’t you?” she asked, beginning again.
“No—I don’t think so,” returned Gilbert. “Do you?”