"You are a bitter disappointment," she said. "Life has brought me many, but you are the greatest. I have had to go without some necessities in my time, and I now shall have to go without you. But I can do it, and I will."
"You mean that you will turn from me altogether?"
"Am I not plain enough? I can be plainer if you like. You shall go out of this house and go where you will. I do not care where you go. But you are forgetting that I have some curiosity. I wish to understand what has happened to you since you wrote your letter. That is excusable, surely."
"It is Logie," said he. "He has made it impossible for me. I cannot cheat a man who has given me all his confidence."
"He gave you his confidence?" cried Madam Flemington. "Heavens! He is well served, that stage-puppet Prince, when his servants confide in the first stranger they meet! Captain Logie must be a man of honour!"
"He is," said Archie. "It was his own private confidence he gave me. I heard his own history from his own lips, and, knowing it, I cannot go on deceiving him. I like him too much."
Madam Flemington was confounded. The difficulty seemed so strangely puerile. A whim, a fancy, was to ruin the work of years and turn everything upside down. On the top, she was exasperated with Archie, but underneath, it was worse. She found her influence and her power at stake, and her slave was being wrested from her, in spite of every interest which had bound them together. She loved him with a jealous, untender love that was dependent on outward circumstances, and she was proud of him. She had smiled at his devotion to her as she would have smiled with gratified comprehension at the fidelity of a favourite dog, understanding the creature's justifiable feeling, and knowing how creditable it was to its intelligence.
"What has all this to do with your duty?" she demanded.
"My duty is too hard," he cried. "I cannot do it, grandmother!"
"_Too hard!_" she exclaimed. "Pah! you weary me--you disgust me. I am sick of you, Archie!"
His lip quivered, and he met her eyes with a mist of dazed trouble in his own. A black curtain seemed to be falling between them.
"I told him every absurdity I could imagine," said he. "I made him believe that I was dependent upon my work for my daily bread. I did not think he would take my lies as he did. His kindness was so great--so generous! Grandmother, he would have had me promise to go to him for help. How can I spy upon him and cheat him after that?"