"What makes you think so?"
"His marrying Maisie like that."
"Why shouldn't he marry her?"
"Because it's you he cares about."
Eliot's voice was quiet and heavy. She knew that what he said was true.
That quiet, heavy voice was the voice of her own innermost conviction.
Yet under the shock of it she sat silent, not looking at him, looking
with wide, fixed eyes at the pattern the apple boughs made on the sky.
"How do you know?" she said, presently.
"Because of the way he talked to mother before he came to see you here.
She says he was frightfully upset when she told him about you and
Colin."
"She told him _that?_"
"Apparently."
"What did she do it for, Eliot?"
"What does mother do anything for? I imagine she wanted to put Jerrold
off so that you could stick on with Colin. You've taken him off her
hands and she wants him kept off."
"So she told him I was Colin's mistress."
"Mind you, she doesn't think a bit the worse of you for that. She
admires you for it no end."
"Do you suppose I care what she thinks? It's her making Jerrold think
it...Eliot, how could she?"
"She could, because she only sees things as they affect herself."
"Do you believe she really thinks it?"
"She's made herself think it because she wanted to."
"But why--why should she want to?"
"I've told you why. She's afraid of having to look after Colin. I've no
illusions about mother. She's always been like that. She wouldn't see
what she was doing to you. Before she did it she'd persuaded herself
that it was Colin and not Jerrold that you cared for. And she wouldn't
do it deliberately at all. I know it has all the effect of low cunning,
but it isn't. It's just one of her sudden movements. She'd rush into it
on a blind impulse."
Anne saw it all, she saw that Adeline had slandered her to Jerrold and
to Eliot, that she had made use of her love for Colin, which was her
love for Jerrold, to betray her; that she had betrayed her to safeguard
her own happy life, without pity and without remorse; she had done all
of these things and none of them. They were the instinctive movements of
her funk. Where Adeline's ease and happiness were concerned she was one
incarnate funk. You couldn't think of her as a reasonable and
responsible being, to be forgiven or unforgiven.
"It doesn't matter how she did it. It's done now," she said.
"Really, Anne, it was too bad of Colin. He oughtn't to have let you."
"He couldn't help it, poor darling. He wasn't in a state. Don't put that
into his head. It just had to happen... I don't care, Eliot. If it was
to be done again to-morrow I'd do it. Only, if I'd known, I could have
told Jerrold the truth. The others can think what they like. It'll only
make me stick to Colin all the more. I promised Jerrold I'd look after
him and I shall as long as he wants me. It serves them all right. They
all left him to me--Daddy and Aunt Adeline and Queenie, I mean--and they
can't stop me now."