Chapter 16 - Page 2

it was natural we should meet."

"Do you call this meeting? I hoped I shouldn't see you. In so big
a place as London it seemed very possible."

"It was apparently repugnant to you even to write to me," her
visitor went on.

Isabel made no reply; the sense of Henrietta Stackpole's
treachery, as she momentarily qualified it, was strong within
her. "Henrietta's certainly not a model of all the delicacies!"
she exclaimed with bitterness. "It was a great liberty to take."

"I suppose I'm not a model either--of those virtues or of any
others. The fault's mine as much as hers."

As Isabel looked at him it seemed to her that his jaw had never
been more square. This might have displeased her, but she took a
different turn. "No, it's not your fault so much as hers. What
you've done was inevitable, I suppose, for you."

"It was indeed!" cried Caspar Goodwood with a voluntary laugh.

"And now that I've come, at any rate, mayn't I stay?"

"You may sit down, certainly."

She went back to her chair again, while her visitor took the
first place that offered, in the manner of a man accustomed to pay
little thought to that sort of furtherance. "I've been hoping
every day for an answer to my letter. You might have written me a
few lines."

"It wasn't the trouble of writing that prevented me; I could as
easily have written you four pages as one. But my silence was an
intention," Isabel said. "I thought it the best thing."

He sat with his eyes fixed on hers while she spoke; then he
lowered them and attached them to a spot in the carpet as
if he were making a strong effort to say nothing but what he
ought. He was a strong man in the wrong, and he was acute enough
to see that an uncompromising exhibition of his strength would
only throw the falsity of his position into relief. Isabel was
not incapable of tasting any advantage of position over a person
of this quality, and though little desirous to flaunt it in his
face she could enjoy being able to say "You know you oughtn't to
have written to me yourself!" and to say it with an air of
triumph.

Caspar Goodwood raised his eyes to her own again; they seemed to
shine through the vizard of a helmet. He had a strong sense of
justice and was ready any day in the year--over and above this--
to argue the question of his rights. "You said you hoped never to
hear from me again; I know that. But I never accepted any such
rule as my own. I warned you that you should hear very soon."

"I didn't say I hoped NEVER to hear from you," said Isabel.

"Not for five years then; for ten years; twenty years. It's the
same thing."

"Do you find it so? It seems to me there's a great difference. I
can