'You don't mean to tell me, Hetta, that you are going to quarrel with me!'
'I don't know about quarrelling. I don't wish to quarrel with any one. But of course we can't be friends when you have married Mrs Hurtle.'
'Nothing on earth would induce me to marry her.'
'Of course I cannot say anything about that. When they told me this story I did not believe them. No; I hardly believed Roger when,--he would not tell it for he was too kind,--but when he would not contradict it. It seemed to be almost impossible that you should have come to me just at the very same moment. For, after all, Mr Montague, nearly three weeks is a very short time. That trip to Lowestoft couldn't have been much above a week before you came to me.'
'What does it matter?'
'Oh no; of course not;--nothing to you. I think I will go away now, Mr Montague. It was very good of you to come and tell me all. It makes it so much easier.'
'Do you mean to say that--you are going to--throw me over?'
'I don't want you to throw Mrs Hurtle over. Good bye.'
'Hetta!'
'No; I will not have you lay your hand upon me. Good night, Mr Montague.' And so she left him.
Paul Montague was beside himself with dismay as he left the house. He had never allowed himself for a moment to believe that this affair of Mrs Hurtle would really separate him from Hetta Carbury. If she could only really know it all, there could be no such result. He had been true to her from the first moment in which he had seen her, never swerving from his love. It was to be supposed that he had loved some woman before; but, as the world goes, that would not, could not, affect her. But her anger was founded on the presence of Mrs Hurtle in London,--which he would have given half his possessions to have prevented. But when she did come, was he to have refused to see her? Would Hetta have wished him to be cold and cruel like that? No doubt he had behaved badly to Mrs Hurtle;--but that trouble he had overcome. And now Hetta was quarrelling with him, though he certainly had never behaved badly to her.
He was almost angry with Hetta as he walked home. Everything that he could do he had done for her. For her sake he had quarrelled with Roger Carbury. For her sake,--in order that he might be effectually free from Mrs Hurtle,--he had determined to endure the spring of the wild cat. For her sake,--so he told himself,--he had been content to abide by that odious railway company, in order that he might if possible preserve an income on which to support her. And now she told him that they must part,--and that only because he had not been cruelly indifferent to the unfortunate woman who had followed him from America. There was no logic in it, no reason,--and, as he thought, very little heart. 'I don't want you to throw Mrs Hurtle over,' she had said. Why should Mrs Hurtle be anything to her? Surely she might have left Mrs Hurtle to fight her own battles. But they were all against him. Roger Carbury, Lady Carbury, and Sir Felix; and the end of it would be that she would be forced into marriage with a man almost old enough to be her father! She could not ever really have loved him. That was the truth. She must be incapable of such love as was his own for her. True love always forgives. And here there was really so very little to forgive! Such were his thoughts as he went to bed that night. But he probably omitted to ask himself whether he would have forgiven her very readily had he found that she had been living 'nearly three weeks ago' in close intercourse with another lover of whom he had hitherto never even heard the name. But then,--as all the world knows,--there is a wide difference between young men and young women!