With those words she entered the summer-house, took one of the chairs at the little round table inside, and signed to me to take the other. I suspected what was coming when she spoke to me in the breakfast-room; I felt certain of it now.
‘Mr Hartright,' she said, ‘I am going to begin by making a frank avowal to you. I am going to say -- without phrase-making, which I detest, or paying compliments, which I heartily despise -- that I have come, in the course of your residence with us, to feel a strong friendly regard for you. I was predisposed in your favour when you first told me of your conduct towards that unhappy woman whom you met under such remarkable circumstances.
Your management of the affair might not have been prudent, but it showed the self-control, the delicacy, and the compassion of a man who was naturally a gentleman. It made me expect good things from you, and you have not disappointed my expectations.'
She paused -- but held up her hand at the same time, as a sign that she awaited no answer from me before she proceeded. When I entered the summer-house, no thought was in me of the woman in white. But now, Miss Halcombe's own words had put the memory of my adventure back in my mind.
It remained there throughout the interview -- remained, and not without a result.
‘As your friend,' she proceeded, ‘I am going to tell you, at once, in my own plain, blunt, downright language, that I have discovered your secret -- without help or hint, mind, from any one else. Mr Hartright, you have thoughtlessly allowed yourself to form an attachment -- a serious and devoted attachment, I am afraid -- to my sister Laura. I don't put you to the pain of confessing it in so many words, because I see and know that you are too honest to deny it. I don't even blame you -- I pity you for opening your heart to a hopeless affection. You have not attempted to take any underhand advantage -- you have not spoken to my sister in secret. You are guilty of weakness and want of attention to your own best interests, but of nothing worse. If you had acted, in any single respect, less delicately and less modestly, I should have told you to leave the house, without an instant's notice, or an instant's consultation of anybody. As it is, I blame the misfortune of your years and your position -- I don't blame you.
Shake hands -- I have given you pain; I am going to give you more, but there is no help for it -- shake hands with your friend, Marian Halcombe, first.'
The sudden kindness -- the warm, high-minded, fearless sympathy which met me on such mercy equal terms, which appealed with such delicate and generous abruptness straight to my heart, my honour, and my courage, overcame me in an instant. I tried to look at her when she took my hand, but my eyes were dim. I tried to thank her, but my voice failed me.
‘Listen to me,' she said, considerately avoiding all notice of my loss of self-control. ‘Listen to me, and let us get it over at once. It is a real true relief to me that I am not obliged, in what I have now to say, to enter into the question -- the hard and cruel question as I think it -- of social inequalities. Circumstances which will try you to the quick, spare me the ungracious necessity of paining a man who has lived in friendly intimacy under the same roof with myself by any humiliating reference to matters of rank and station. You must leave Limmeridge House, Mr Hartright, before more harm is done. It is my duty to say that to you; and it would be equally my duty to say it, under precisely the same serious necessity, if you were the representative of the oldest and wealthiest family in England. You must leave us, not because you are a teacher of drawing --'
She waited a moment, turned her face full on me, and reaching across the table, laid her hand firmly on my arm.
‘Not because you are a teacher of drawing,' she repeated, ‘but because Laura Fairlie is engaged to be married.'
The last word went like a bullet to my heart. My arm lost all sensation of the hand that grasped it. I never moved and never spoke. The sharp autumn breeze that scattered the dead leaves at our feet came as cold to me, on a sudden, as if my own mad hopes were dead leaves too, whirled away by the wind like the rest. Hopes! Betrothed, or not betrothed, she was equally far from me . Would other men have remembered that in my place? Not if they had loved her as I did.
The pang passed, and nothing but the dull numbing pain of it remained.
I felt Miss Halcombe's hand again, tightening its hold on my arm -- I raised my head and looked at her. Her large black eyes were rooted on me, watching the white change on my face, which I felt, and which she saw.
‘Crush it!' she said. ‘Here, where you first saw her, crush it! Don't shrink under it like a woman. Tear it out; trample it under foot like a man!'
The suppressed vehemence with which she spoke, the strength which her will -- concentrated in the look she fixed on me, and in the hold on my arm that she had not yet relinquished -- communicated to mine, steadied me. We both waited for a minute in silence. At the end of that time I had justified her generous faith in my manhood -- I had, outwardly at least, recovered my self-control.
‘Are you yourself again?'
‘Enough myself, Miss Halcombe, to ask your pardon and hers. Enough to be guided by your advice, and to prove my gratitude in that way, if I can prove it in no other.'