his niece....
"It's all tremendously trying for you, I know," he said, with the same
sort of gentleness. "I assure you the situation has distressed me
greatly--from every aspect. And I think it's most kind and--and generous
of you to let me speak with you when you must feel that you've been so
badly treated.... But you see--as it stands, you are involved in it,
really, more than any one else. I'm sorry, but in fact the whole issue
is in your hands."
"I can't see that. He has given you his--his version of what took place.
No one will prevent him from saying the same thing to whomever
he wishes."
"But who will believe him?"
Carlisle perceived a rhetorical question, though she didn't know it
under that name; she made no reply. She would really have preferred no
more questions of any sort--what was the use of them? In her, as in all
the Maker's creatures, the instinct for self-preservation was planted to
work resistlessly. Small wonder, indeed, if, in the unexpected discovery
that dependence on Dalhousie's dubious gentlemanliness was unnecessary,
the uprush of relief should have swept away all lesser considerations,
flooded down all doubts. All was settled again in a trice, as by a
miracle: the miraculous agent here being, not the Deity (as she vaguely
suspected), but only the Demon Rum, he who had taught the frail lad
Dalhousie to be so mistrustful of himself ...
She had had a harassing day, including three momentous _tete-a-tetes_
with three different and widely variegated men, mostly comparative
strangers: Jack Dalhousie, Mr. Canning, and now this Mr. Vivian. She was
very tired of being dogged and nagged at and interfered with, and she
wanted very much to terminate this interview, which she saw now had been
extorted from her by a pretty sharp piece of deception. And through her
mind there skipped a beckoning thought of Mr. Canning, conceived as
feverishly pacing the piazza ...
"You see, his defence," Mr. Vivian was saying, with some signs of
nervousness, "is merely his own word that he had no idea you were upset.
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