“I admit that you did,” replied Emily, painfully coloring; “but you, nevertheless, contrived to throw a shadow on his constancy and purity as a lover, and what could have been worse to me who loved him?”
“I contrived!” exclaimed Fernando, lifting his head with an air of proud and disdainful injured innocence, which Harrington and Muriel alone saw was theatrically assumed and overdone. “I contrived! Miss Ames, I might answer this charge with simple silence, and conscious of its untruth, might bear it as a gentlemen should bear all injuries, with forgiveness. But, since you were so unfortunate as to receive a wrong impression from remarks which were made only in candor, and which were not intended to injure any one, let me say this: Did you not yourself ask me to tell you candidly what I thought of Mr. Wentworth?”
“I own I did,” replied poor Emily, wishing she had not said a word, and sorry that she had so rashly blamed the good Fernando for what was, she thought, her own fault after all.
“And when you asked me that, in the mutual confidence of friendship,” pursued Witherlee, “can you blame me for having answered you with the candor you requested?”
Emily, with the tears very near her eyes, and her face glowing, was silent.
“If I had imagined what your feelings for Mr. Wentworth were,” continued Witherlee, with touching mildness, “I would never have uttered anything but praise of him, though you asked it ever so much. But I never even suspected that. As for throwing a shadow on Mr. Wentworth’s constancy, I never did it. I simply said, believing it to be true, and I’m very sorry if it’s not true, that he had had a great many love affairs, and fell in love easily, and got out of it lightly, and so forth; but I’m sure that’s nothing uncommon with a handsome young man whom all the young ladies are after, and no blame to anybody.”
Wentworth colored up to the roots of his hair at the latter part of this speech, which the good Fernando delivered with a nonchalant, jocose air, very different from the wicked significance of manner with which, in speaking the words he avowed, and others of the same nature, he had given Emily to understand that her lover was a gay Lothario.
“You’re mistaken, Fernando,” stammered Wentworth, “if you think I ever fell seriously in love with any woman, and outlived it. I’ve had my fancy touched by a number of pretty girls, it is true, and I’ve been uncommonly amiable to them, no doubt, but they always disappointed me when I came to know them a little, and there never was any heart-injury done anywhere.”
“I never supposed or said there was,” replied Fernando, coolly. “It is Emily’s misfortune to have exaggerated the simple meaning of what I did say, and what you, Richard, have confirmed. As for throwing any suspicion on Wentworth’s moral character, Emily, I do not know what you can mean, and I must ask you to explain, for this is the most serious part of the whole misapprehension.”