“I _have_ been insincere—if you will have the word—I mean I _have_ coquetted, and do _not_ love him!”
But Grace clung to her position like a limpet. “You may have trifled with others, but him you love as you never loved another man.”
“Oh, well—I won’t argue,” said Mrs. Charmond, laughing faintly. “And you come to reproach me for it, child.”
“No,” said Grace, magnanimously. “You may go on loving him if you like—I don’t mind at all. You’ll find it, let me tell you, a bitterer business for yourself than for me in the end. He’ll get tired of you soon, as tired as can be—you don’t know him so well as I—and then you may wish you had never seen him!”
Mrs. Charmond had grown quite pale and weak under this prophecy. It was extraordinary that Grace, whom almost every one would have characterized as a gentle girl, should be of stronger fibre than her interlocutor. “You exaggerate—cruel, silly young woman,” she reiterated, writhing with little agonies. “It is nothing but playful friendship—nothing! It will be proved by my future conduct. I shall at once refuse to see him more—since it will make no difference to my heart, and much to my name.”
“I question if you will refuse to see him again,” said Grace, dryly, as with eyes askance she bent a sapling down. “But I am not incensed against you as you are against me,” she added, abandoning the tree to its natural perpendicular. “Before I came I had been despising you for wanton cruelty; now I only pity you for misplaced affection. When Edgar has gone out of the house in hope of seeing you, at seasonable hours and unseasonable; when I have found him riding miles and miles across the country at midnight, and risking his life, and getting covered with mud, to get a glimpse of you, I have called him a foolish man—the plaything of a finished coquette. I thought that what was getting to be a tragedy to me was a comedy to you. But now I see that tragedy lies on YOUR side of the situation no less than on mine, and more; that if I have felt trouble at my position, you have felt anguish at yours; that if I have had disappointments, you have had despairs. Heaven may fortify _me_—God help _you!_”
“I cannot attempt to reply to your raving eloquence,” returned the other, struggling to restore a dignity which had completely collapsed. “My acts will be my proofs. In the world which you have seen nothing of, friendships between men and women are not unknown, and it would have been better both for you and your father if you had each judged me more respectfully, and left me alone. As it is I wish never to see or speak to you, madam, any more.”