Alice was not satisfied with her brother.  The practical aspects of the rupture she could consider leniently, but the tone he assumed was jarring to her instincts.  Though nothing like a warm friendship existed between her and Emma, she sympathised, in a way impossible to Richard, with the sorrows of the abandoned girl.  She was conscious of what her judgment would be if another man had acted thus; and though this was not so much a matter of consciousness, she felt that Richard might have spoken in a way more calculated to aid her in taking his side.  She wished, in fact, to see only his advantage, and was very much tempted to see everything but that.

‘But you can’t keep her in the dark any longer,’ she urged.  ’Why, it’s cruel!’

‘I can’t tell her,’ he repeated monotonously.

Alice drew in her feet.  It symbolised retiring within her defences.  She saw what he was aiming at, and felt not at all disposed to pleasure him.  There was a long silence; Alice was determined not to be the first to break it.

‘You refuse to help me?’ Richard asked at length, between his teeth.

‘I think it would be every bit as bad for me as for you,’ she replied.

‘That you can’t think,’ he argued.  ’She can’t blame you; you’ve only to say I’ve behaved like a blackguard, and you’re out of it.’

‘And when do you mean to tell mother?’

‘She’ll have to hear of it from other people.  I can’t tell her.’

Richard had a suspicion that he was irretrievably ruining himself in his sister’s opinion, and it did not improve his temper.  It was a foretaste of the wider obloquy to come upon him, possibly as hard to bear as any condemnation to which he had exposed himself.  He shook himself out of the chair.

’Well, that’s all I’ve got to tell you.  Perhaps you’d better think over it.  I don’t want to keep you away from home longer than you care to stay.  There’s a train at a few minutes after nine in the morning.’

He shuffled for a few moments about the writing-table, then went from the room.

Alice was unhappy.  The reaction from her previous high spirits, as soon as it had fully come about, brought her even to tears.  She cried silently, and, to do the girl justice, at least half her sorrow was on Emma’s account.  Presently she rose and began to walk about the room; she went to the window, and looked out on to the white garden.  The sky beyond the thin boughs was dusking; the wind, which sang so merrily a few hours ago, had fallen to sobbing.

It was too wretched to remain alone; she resolved to go into the drawing-room; perhaps her brother was there.  As she approached the door somebody knocked on the outside, then there entered a dark man of spruce appearance, who drew back a step as soon as he saw her.

‘Pray excuse me,’ he said, with an air of politeness.  ’I supposed I should find Mr. Mutimer here.’

‘I think he’s in the house,’ Alice replied.