Conrad saw at once that he had made a blunder. Face and voice alike changed, and he said in his gentle, deprecating way:
“Forgive me, Monica. I had no right to speak as I did. It was rude and unjustifiable. Only if you knew as much as I do about that fellow, you would not wonder that I hate to see him hanging round you as he is doing now, waiting, as it were, to step into the place that is his by legal, but by no moral right. It would be hard to see anyone acting such a part. It is ten times harder when you know your man.”
“What do you know against Mr. Trevlyn? My father is acquainted with all his past history, and can learn nothing to his discredit. What story have you got hold of? I would rather hear facts than hints.”
“I know that he is a cad, and a sneak, and a spy; but I have no wish to upset your father’s confidence in him. We were at Oxford together, and of course it was not pleasant to me to hear his boasting of his future lordship at Trevlyn. That was the first thing that made me dislike him. Later on I had fresh cause.”
Had Monica been more conversant with the family history, she would have known that this boasting could never have taken place, as Randolph had been far enough from the peerage at that time. As it was, she looked grave and a little severe as she asked:
“Did he do that?” and listened with instinctive repugnance to the details fabricated by the inventive genius of Conrad.
He next cleverly alluded again to his past follies, and appealed to Monica’s generosity not to change towards him because he had sinned.
“It is so hard to feel cast off by old friends,” he said, with a very expressive look at the girl. “I know what it is to see myself cold shouldered by those to whom I have learned to look up with reverence and affection. I have suffered very much from misrepresentation and hardness—suffered beyond what I deserve. I did fall once—I was sorely tempted, and I did commit one act of ingratitude and deceit that I have most bitterly repented of. I was very young and sorely tempted, and I did something which might have placed me in the felon’s dock, and would have done so had somebody not far away had his will. But I was forgiven by the man I had injured, and I have tried my utmost since to make atonement for the past. The hardest part of all has been to see myself scorned and contemned by those whose good-will I have most wished to win. Sometimes I have known sorrow that has been akin to despair. I have been met with coldness and disdain when most I needed help and sympathy. Monica, you will not help to push me back into the abyss? You will not help to make me think that repentance is in vain?”