"Dear Hugo, can you not tell me what is wrong?" said Angela, more seriously alarmed by his silence than by his tears. She had a right to question him, for he had previously given her as much of his confidence as he ever gave to anybody, and she had been a very good friend to him. "Are you in some great trouble?"
"Yes," he said, in a voice so choked that she could hardly hear the word.
"And you have been in some scuffle surely. Your clothes are torn--you are hurt!" said she, sympathetically. "Why, Hugo, you must have been fighting!" Then, as he gave her no answer, she resumed in a voice of tender concern, "You are not really hurt, are you, dear boy? You can move--you can get up? Shall I fetch anyone to help you?"
"No, no, no!" he cried, clutching at her dress, as though to stay her going. "Don't leave me. I am not hurt--at least, I can walk and stand easily enough, though I have been hurt--set upon, and treated like--like a dog by him----"
"By whom, Hugo?" said Angela, startled by the tenor of his incoherent sentences. "Who has set upon you and ill-treated you?"
But Hugo hid his face. "I won't tell you," he said, sullenly.
There was a silence. "Can I do anything for you?" Angela asked at length, very gently.
She waited a little longer, and, as he made no further sign, she tried to rise. "Shall I go, Hugo?" she said.
"Yes--if you like." Then he burst out passionately, "Of course, you will go. You are like everybody else. You are like Richard Luttrell. You will do what he tells you. I am abandoned by everybody. You all hate me; and I hate you all!"
Little as Angela understood his words, there was something in them that made her seat herself beside him on the grass, instead of leaving him alone. "Dear Hugo," she said, "I have never hated you."
"I see," said she, softly. "I understand you now. You are in trouble--you have been doing something wrong, and you think that we shall be angry with you. Listen, Hugo, Richard maybe angry at first, but he is kind as well as just. He will forgive you, and we shall love you as much as ever. I will tell him that you are sorry for whatever it is, and then he will not refuse his pardon."
"I don't want it," said Hugo, hoarsely. "I hate him."
"I hate him--I loathe him. You would hate him, too, if you knew him as well as I do. You are going to marry him! Well, you will be miserable all your life long, and then you will remember what I say."