There was a slighting note in his voice that she found intolerable. She turned deliberately and met his look.
“You know the Dermots,” she said. “You know quite well that they are not just—farm-people. Why should you conceal the fact?”
He made a careless gesture. “I know that one of them shot me in mistake for a rabbit that night I waited for you,” he said. “I was never more scared in my life. That was the son, I presume? Did he ever mention that episode to you?”
“No? Perhaps he wasn’t very proud of it. Perhaps he realized that the rabbit fallacy wouldn’t carry him very far in a court of law. I fancy he imagined that I was poaching on his preserves.” Rotherby spoke with a sarcastic drawl. “Very unreasonable of him, what?”
She felt the burning colour rise in her face under his eyes, and she averted her own. “Not being in his confidence, I really can hardly give an opinion,” she said.
“Oh, you’re not in his confidence?” said Rotherby. “Somehow I didn’t think you were, or you would hardly be so ready to take up the cudgels in his defence. He’s a curious fellow. I knew him years ago. He had brains as a young man, then somehow he got touched in the upper story and got condemned to the simple life. That was how he came to take up farming. An awful blow to the old man, I believe! I heard he was never the same again afterwards. That is about as far as my information takes me. I must admit that from a personal point of view I am not vastly interested in the family. Did you find them interesting?”
“They were kinder to me than I can possibly say,” Frances said.
The careless information he had given her was like an obnoxious draught that she had been compelled to swallow. But somehow, in spite of herself, she had assimilated it. It explained so much which before had been inexplicable. She remembered how she had more than once asked herself if the lonely gladiator on that Devon moor were always wholly responsible for his actions. And was this why he had told her only that morning that it was no good—no good—that her love was nought but a handicap to be overcome and cast aside?
Again she was conscious of the pain she had stifled waking within her. Again she felt the chill presence of the haunting spectre. Then Rotherby’s voice came to her again, and she turned almost with relief.