Madge hesitated. She was in a most unpleasant position. She had hoped to be able to come gleefully to him with the good news that the reconciliation between his father and uncle had been effected, and she was disappointed. Her proofs of Mr Hadleigh’s innocence of all complicity in Austin Shield’s misfortunes had not been accepted in the way she had expected. As regarded Philip, she had been assured that he was safe so long as she kept her promise to Mr Beecham. So she could neither give him the good news she had been so confident of bringing to him, nor sympathise fully with his anticipations of absolute ruin. That was what rendered her manner peculiar, and in his present vision, ungracious.
‘I have been told that you are harassed by the way things have been going, and that there have been mistakes somewhere. But I heard nothing about your letter.’
‘And yet you have been with him and Mr Beecham all day!’
She did change colour at the mention of Beecham’s name, the blood flushing her cheeks, and then as suddenly fading from them. His over-wrought nerves rendered him sensitive to the slightest change of voice, look, or manner.
‘Yes,’ she replied at length steadily; ‘I have been with them a long time to-day, and they spoke a great deal about you, for they are both your friends.’
‘No doubt, no doubt. Beecham has no reason to be otherwise; and Mr Shield has acted as my friend until now, when he leaves me in this horrible suspense.’
‘But it must be because he is considering what is best to be done for you.’
‘He did not say it exactly in those words; but I understood it from what he did say and from his whole manner in speaking of you.’
‘I suppose I ought to find satisfaction in that.... But how was it you came to visit Mr Shield? You have not met him before.’ (This abruptly.)
Her eyelids drooped, and her head was bowed a little.
‘And you never told me! Where did you become acquainted with him?’
‘Why, when was he there? Aunt Hessy does not know of it, or she would have told me. You did not, although you should have known how pleasant it would have been to me to find that he had seen you and liked you.’
That she had not previously told him of her acquaintance with Mr Shield, was a disagreeable sign of want of confidence; but his surprise was greater than his displeasure. He had never been able to obtain more than ten or fifteen minutes’ audience of him; and yet here was Madge, without giving the slightest hint that she had ever seen him, accepted by him as a friend, and allowed to spend hours with him. If this was not deception on her part, it bore such a strong resemblance to conduct of that kind as to make him feel cold. A new pain entered his distracted mind. If she were capable of deceiving him in one way, how was he to trust her in other ways? She knew how he hated all mysteries and underhand work. She knew how he insisted on the simple rule, that as it was so much more easy and comfortable to be plain and above-board in everything, than to adopt subterfuge, only fools chose the crooked course. Yet here he found that, for some unknown reason, she had been concealing most interesting facts from him.