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"If I ventured to look you in the face, I am afraid I might forget myself. I have always been brought up like a lady, and I wish to show it even in the company of such a wretch as you are. There is not one word of truth in what you have said of me. I went to the hotel to find Mr. Dunboyne. Ah, you may sneer! I haven't got your good looks and a vile use you have made of them.
I wished I had not been so eager to have Mr. Dunboyne asked to dinner. A fear has come to me that I may have degraded myself. My spirits are depressed. This, as papa tells us in his sermons, is a miserable world. I am sorry I accepted the Staveleys' invitation. I am sorry I went to see the pictures.
Somebody is trying to poison Mr. Dunboyne; and somebody will succeed unless he is removed from this house." I am a poor feeble creature. The doctor caught me, or I should have dropped on the grass. It was not a fainting-fit. I only shook and shivered so that I was too weak to stand up. Encouraged by the doctor, I recovered sufficiently to be able to ask him where Philip was to be taken to.
He asked, first, if there was anybody staying with us besides the regular members of the household. I said we had no visitor. He wanted to know, next, if Mr. Philip Dunboyne had made any enemies since he has been living in our town. I said none that I knew of and I took the liberty of asking what he meant.
This was another example of my sister's childish character; she is instantly familiar with new acquaintances, if she happens to like them. I anticipated some amusement from hearing how she had contrived to establish confidential relations with a highly-cultivated man like Mr. Dunboyne. But, while Miss Jillgall was with us, it was just as well to keep within the limits of commonplace conversation.
Our talk was mainly devoted to the worthy people with whom I had been staying, and whose new schools I had helped to found. Not a word was said relating to my sister, or to Mr. Dunboyne. Poor father looked so sadly weary and ill that I ventured, after what the doctor had said to Eunice, to hint at the value of rest and change of scene to an overworked man.
My father is too well-bred to speak to a lady while his attention is absorbed by a fowl. He finished the second wing, and then he asked if "Philip was engaged to be married." "I am not quite sure," Mrs. Staveley confessed. "Then, my dear friend, we will wait till we are sure." "But, Mr. Dunboyne, there is really no need to wait. I suppose your son comes here, now and then, to see you?"
He tried to thank me; but I would not allow it. "Before I consent to accept the expression of your gratitude," I said, "I must know a little more of you than I know now. This is only the second occasion on which we have met. Let us look back a little, Mr. Philip Dunboyne. You were Eunice's affianced husband; and you broke faith with her. That was a rascally action. How do you defend it?"
Dunboyne had seen me first. Absurd! if I was not too tired to do anything more, those last lines should be scratched out. I said so to Miss Jillgall, and I say it again here. Nothing will induce me to think ill of Helena. My sister is a good deal tired, and a little out of temper after the railway journey. This is exactly what happened to me when I went to London.
She dropped all familiarity with me, and she stated the object of her visit without a superfluous word of explanation or apology. I thought this a remarkable effort for a woman; and I recognized the merit of it by leaving the lion's share of the talk to my visitor. In these terms she opened her business with me: "Has Mr. Philip Dunboyne told you why he went to London?"
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