Barfoot listened with gratification.  It was much to have compelled Rhoda to explain herself, and on such a subject.

‘Nor even to work together?’ he asked.

‘It is doubtful.’

Rhoda still moved forward, but very slowly, and without impatience.

’You will somehow get over this difficulty, I am sure.  Such friends as you and Mary don’t quarrel like ordinary unreasonable women.  Won’t you let me be of use?’

‘How?’ asked Rhoda with surprise.

‘I shall make my cousin see that she is wrong.’

‘How do you know that she is wrong?’

’Because I am convinced that you must be right.  I respect Mary’s judgment, but I respect yours still more.’

Rhoda raised her head and smiled.

‘That compliment,’ she said, ’pleases me less than the one you have uttered without intending it.’

‘You must explain.’

’You said that by making Miss Barfoot see she was wrong you could alter her mind towards me.  The world’s opinion would hardly support you in that, even in the case of men.’

Everard laughed.

’Now this is better.  Now we are talking in the old way.  Surely you know that the world’s opinion has no validity for me.’

She kept silence.

’But, after all, is Mary wrong?  I’m not afraid to ask the question now that your face has cleared a little.  How angry you were with me!  But surely I didn’t deserve it.  You would have been much more forbearing if you had known what delight I felt when I saw you sitting over there.  It is nearly a month since we met, and I couldn’t keep away any longer.’

Rhoda swept the distance with indifferent eyes.

‘Mary was fond of this girl?’ he inquired, watching her.

‘Yes, she was.’

’Then her distress, and even anger, are natural enough.  We won’t discuss the girl’s history; probably I know all that I need to.  But whatever her misdoing, you certainly didn’t wish to drive her to suicide.’

Rhoda deigned no reply.

‘All the same,’ he continued in his gentlest tone, ’it turns out that you have practically done so.  If Mary had taken the girl back that despair would most likely never have come upon her.  Isn’t it natural that Mary should repent of having been guided by you, and perhaps say rather severe things?’

’Natural, no doubt.  But it is just as natural for me to resent blame where I have done nothing blameworthy.’

‘You are absolutely sure that this is the case?’

‘I thought you expressed a conviction that I was in the right?’

There was no smile, but Everard believed that he detected its possibility on the closed lips.

’I have got into the way of always thinking so—­in questions of this kind.  But perhaps you tend to err on the side of severity.  Perhaps you make too little allowance for human weakness.’

’Human weakness is a plea that has been much abused, and generally in an interested spirit.’