I thought it only honest to return to her
and tell her, even though I had no hope. And then she pitied me, and
cried, and accepted me. I tell it to you as her friend." He drew a
little nearer and quite fraternally laid his hand upon her own. "I know
you won't betray me, though you may think it wrong for me to have told
it; but I wanted you to know how good she was and true."
For a moment Mrs. Horncastle was amazed and discomfited, although she
saw, with the inscrutable instinct of her sex, no inconsistency between
the Kitty of those days and the Kitty now shamefully hiding from her
husband in the same hotel. No doubt Kitty had some good reason for her
chivalrous act. But she could see the unmistakable effect of that act
upon the more logically reasoning husband, and that it might lead him to
be more merciful to the later wrong. And there was a keener irony that
his first movement of unconscious kindliness towards her was the outcome
of his affection for his undeserving wife.
"You said just now she was more practical than you," she said dryly.
"Apart from this evidence of it, what other reasons have you for
thinking so? Do you refer to her independence or her dealings in the
stock market?" she added, with a laugh.
"No," said Barker seriously, "for I do not think her quite practical
there; indeed, I'm afraid she is about as bad as I am. But I'm glad you
have spoken, for I can now talk confidentially with you, and as you
and she are both in the same ventures, perhaps she will feel less
compunction in hearing from you--as your own opinion--what I have
to tell you than if I spoke to her myself.
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