“Trouble me!” he cried, “take much interest! Do you think there is anything you care for that I don’t take an interest in? What is the chief thing I have thought of ever since I knew you? You speak so much at your ease; I wish you would tell me that.”
“I hope it is nothing to be angry with me about,” said Lydia, with meekness, “but how can I know?”
“No, I suppose you don’t know,” he said, with almost a scornful tone, “you have only seen me every day these five months, and talked to me, and pretended to take some interest in me, as you say; and now you turn upon me and ask me how can you know? How can you help knowing? is what I should say.”
“Cousin Lionel, I don’t know why you should be angry. If I had waited for you this morning I should have lost my chance. There was so little time to do anything; and time runs away so fast when it is the last day.”
“Do you think I am talking only of this morning? What is this morning? It is all the time I complain of. It has just been the same all the time.”
And now it was Lydia’s turn to look round, this time in unfeigned surprise; but her glance at him, perhaps, gave her more information than his words: at least, there was a subtle tone of hypocrisy in the meekness with which she asked.
“Have I displeased you all the time?” with a little tragic accent of remonstrance. “I am so sorry,” she said.
“Sorry! and displeased! it is not words like those that will do any good,” Lionel cried.
Liddy looked at him again piteously, but perhaps in the puckers round her eyes, and the droop of her mouth, there was a dimple or two which the faintest touch could have turned into smiles. She shook her head.
“You are hard upon me, Cousin Lionel; you are angry about this morning, and then you tell me it is not this morning; but all the time; and when I say I am sorry (what else can I say? for I am very sorry, and so mistaken! I thought we were such friends!) you say, words like these will not do any good. What am I to say? It is a discovery I never expected to make, that I had been--disagreeable all the time.”
“I think you want to drive me out of my senses!” he cried.
Which, indeed, was very foolish; she had all the reason and force of the argument on her side, and he, having at some point in the altercation taken a wrong turning, got only further and further astray at every step he made.