“Oh, go on, Richard, go on,” urged Harrington.
“No, I won’t. Let it go. Come, Harrington, let’s drop it. Upon my word, I can’t repeat it, and I won’t,” said Wentworth.
Harrington saw that it was no use to urge him, and was silent. The fact was, Wentworth did not like to have Harrington think of him as the lover of Emily, and Witherlee’s portraiture of him as such was too faithful for exhibition. No man likes to confess that he has been jilted by a woman, as Wentworth thought he had been by Emily, and to say that he had been reputed her lover by Witherlee was certainly an approximation at least to such a confession.
“Very well,” remarked Harrington after a pause, “if you don’t care to talk about it, let it go. Now, Richard, I want you to leave this matter to me. There’s more in it, I’m convinced, than appears, and if you make a quarrel with Fernando we shall never know the whole of it. Just keep cool, say nothing to him of what you have heard, and let me track the fox through all his doublings. Will you promise?”
Wentworth hesitated, but his own suspicions were roused, and he felt the good sense of Harrington’s proposal.
“I agree, Harrington,” he said at length. “Yes, I promise, and I’ll keep dark.”
“Good,” replied Harrington. “I declare, Richard, I can’t help feeling, in view of the serious grandeur of life, that all this is pitifully petty. These pigmy broils and imbroglios seem all the more trivial in contrast with such scenes and passions as I have been in to-day. I wish we could live only in the larger life, unvexed by this buzz and fribble.”
“What has happened to-day, Harrington?” asked Wentworth.
Harrington told him briefly of the scene in Southac street, omitting to mention what passed in Roux’s house, lest it should lead to questions verging upon the secret which Emily now shared with Muriel, himself and Captain Fisher.
“I wish I could feel interested as you do in these political affairs,” said Wentworth, lightly, when Harrington had concluded. “Somehow, I can’t though. Of course, I’m for liberty in my own quiet way, and I pity the poor darkeys and all that, but then it doesn’t come home to me at all. I’m an artist in the grain, I suppose, and art-life and matters connected with it, leave me no interest for other matters.”