He had helped
her in the day of her necessity, and she had set him at once as her hero
on a pinnacle, and had looked up to him and worshipped him secretly, and
from afar. She knew that she had sat before him this afternoon shamed, and
helpless, and childish; filled with as much sorrow for him who was so
clumsily wounding her as for herself. She had not desired to retaliate;
she would not have been revenged on him if she could; the only effort of
which she had been capable had been the effort to make him think that she
had been as little wounded as possible, that the situation was not a
horrible one to her.
Yet when they asked her why she had not shown more spirit she could not
explain. She could only sit silent and miserable, and let them talk.
Even Mr. Gibbon, usually so preoccupied and silent now, talked. He said
that he supposed Sir Francis Forcus called hisself a gentleman, but that
he, the Manchester man, had always had his doubts on the subject, and that
one day he hoped for the opportunity of telling him that he was a _snob_.
And more, with unwanted, stammering loquacity, to that effect, with fire
of eye, with un-called-for, excited repetition.
CHAPTER XXIV
The Cold-Hearted Fates
When Mrs.
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