‘Ben,’ she said, ‘you are not to think I did not like Millicent, or that she was not very nice. I daresay it was not her fault. Everybody made a fuss about her wherever she went;--she was so very pretty. I don’t think it could have been her fault.’
‘Being pretty?’ said Ben, with the sneer that women hate.
‘You know I did not mean that,’ said Mary, injured. ‘I think it must have been the gentlemen’s own doing. Mr. Thorny was very silly to think she would ever have had him. I am sure that must have been his foolishness. She so pretty and so clever, and he only a common curate, you know;--just like other curates, nothing particular about him. It must have been his own fault.’
‘I have not the advantage of knowing what you refer to,’ said Ben, with the haughtiest assumption of indifference, though his temper had taken fire and his pride was all in arms. A curate,--a common curate,--to have been associated anyhow, by any means whatever, with Millicent! In his heart he was furious, though he managed to keep some outward calm.
‘Oh, it was nothing,’ said Mary, faltering, and feeling that her attempt at making up had not been successful,--‘only they said it was that that threw him into a consumption. But it was not her fault,--it might have happened to any of us,’ said Mary, with a sudden blush; for had it not fallen to her lot, though she was no flirt and not even a beauty like Millicent, to inflict a passing wound without knowing it on a curate of her own?
Then Ben laughed, but it was a very unpleasant laugh. ‘When a lady frowns a man can but die,’ he said. ‘How could he do less? I suppose that is what you mean?’