"There is not, I tell you--"
"--And, if it is something you cannot understand," he continued
pleasantly, "perhaps it might be well to ask Nina to explain it to you."
"There is nothing to explain."
"--Because," he went on, very gently, "one is sometimes led by malicious
suggestion to draw false and unpleasant inferences from harmless
facts--"
"Captain Selwyn--"
"Yes, Eileen."
But she could not go on; speech and thought itself remained sealed; only
a confused consciousness of being hurt remained--somehow to be remedied
by something he might say--might deny. Yet how could it help her for him
to deny what she herself refused to believe?--refused through sheer
instinct while ignorant of its meaning.
Even if he had done what she heard Rosamund Fane say he had done, it had
remained meaningless to her save for the manner of the telling. But
now--but now! Why had they laughed--why had their attitudes and manner
and the disconnected phrases in French left her flushed and rigid among
the idle group at supper? Why had they suddenly seemed to remember her
presence--and express their abrupt consciousness of it in such furtive
signals and silence?
It was false, anyway--whatever it meant.
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