“And you didn’t mean it should, if you could help it,” interrupted Emily, with bland tranquillity.
Witherlee looked at her with an astonishment so admirably counterfeited, that she almost thought it genuine, and her heart faltered in its purpose. Wentworth, with a strong disposition to laugh, bit his lip, and looked at the floor. Muriel wore an air of sunny laziness, and Harrington, sitting a little apart, kept his searching blue eyes fixed intently on Witherlee’s countenance, unnoticed by him.
“Why, Emily,” said Fernando, slowly, after a long pause, “what do you mean! If I could help it? Why how could I hinder it, even if I wished to? How could I be supposed to know anything about it?”
“You knew Richard and I loved each other,” stammered Emily, losing her self-possession as she thought how intangible was all her evidence against her colloquist. “You knew it, and you tried to prejudice me against him.”
“I knew it?” repeated Fernando. “Miss Ames, you must pardon me for saying it—but you are very unjust to me.” And he assumed an injured air, which was really touching. “It is utterly impossible that I could have known it, for neither you nor Wentworth, nor anybody, ever told me. As for prejudicing him, I do not know what you refer to—but if you mean our conversation one evening more than a week ago, you must permit me to observe that that is only a proof that I knew nothing whatever of this matter. For if I had, is it likely that I would be so foolish as to injure myself in your good opinion by saying anything against a man you loved? Even if I were ungenerous enough to do so, would I be so unwise? I am sorry, very sorry that you can think so meanly of my good sense, not to speak of anything higher.”
He said it all so mildly, so sadly, with such an injured air, that Emily was confounded, and felt unable to deny the apparent justice of his plausible plea. Yet a desperate sense that he had tampered with her feelings, and maligned her lover, still lingered in her mind.
“It may be as you say, Fernando,” she faltered, “but at any rate, you know that you made remarks affecting Richard’s character, which could not but make me think hardly of him.”
“What did I say?” inquired Fernando, lifting his eyebrows in utter astonishment.
Emily, at that moment, could not for the life of her recall a single disparaging sentence. All the delicate poisoned phrases which had interspersed his lavish praise of Wentworth, were as invisible to the eye of her mind, as would be the deadly fragrance of some exquisite poisonous flower.
“Did I not speak of Mr. Wentworth in the warmest terms?” he demanded. “Did I not pay the warmest tributes to his character and talents?”