The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (if you liked this book .TXT) 📕

seemed to have gathered from this final inspection: “You are to let me take you away from here.”

Lily flushed at the suddenness of the attack; then she stiffened under it and said coldly: “And may I ask where you mean me to go?”

“Back to Gerty in the first place, if you will; the essential thing is that it should be away from here.”

The unusual harshness of his tone might have shown her how much the words cost him; but she was in no state to measure his feelings while her own were in a flame of revolt. To neglect her, perhaps even to avoid her, at a time when she had most need of her friends, and then suddenly and unwarrantably to break into her life with this strange assumption of authority, was to rouse in her every instinct of pride and self-defence.

“I am very much obliged to you,” she said, “for taking such an interest in my plans; but I am quite contented where I am, and have no intention of leaving.”

Selden had risen, and was standing before her in an attitude of uncontrollable expectancy.

“That simply means that you don’t know where you are!” he exclaimed.

Lily rose also, with a quick flash of anger. “If you have come here to say disagreeable things about Mrs. Hatch⁠—”

“It is only with your relation to Mrs. Hatch that I am concerned.”

“My relation to Mrs. Hatch is one I have no reason to be ashamed of. She has helped me to earn a living when my old friends were quite resigned to seeing me starve.”

“Nonsense! Starvation is not the only alternative. You know you can always find a home with Gerty till you are independent again.”

“You show such an intimate acquaintance with my affairs that I suppose you mean⁠—till my aunt’s legacy is paid?”

“I do mean that; Gerty told me of it,” Selden acknowledged without embarrassment. He was too much in earnest now to feel any false constraint in speaking his mind.

“But Gerty does not happen to know,” Miss Bart rejoined, “that I owe every penny of that legacy.”

“Good God!” Selden exclaimed, startled out of his composure by the abruptness of the statement.

“Every penny of it, and more too,” Lily repeated; “and you now perhaps see why I prefer to remain with Mrs. Hatch rather than take advantage of Gerty’s kindness. I have no money left, except my small income, and I must earn something more to keep myself alive.”

Selden hesitated a moment; then he rejoined in a quieter tone: “But with your income and Gerty’s⁠—since you allow me to go so far into the details of the situation⁠—you and she could surely contrive a life together which would put you beyond the need of having to support yourself. Gerty, I know, is eager to make such an arrangement, and would be quite happy in it⁠—”

“But I should not,” Miss Bart interposed. “There are many reasons why it would be neither kind to Gerty nor wise for myself.” She paused a moment, and as he seemed to await a farther explanation, added with a quick lift of her head: “You will perhaps excuse me from giving you these reasons.”

“I have no claim to know them,” Selden answered, ignoring her tone; “no claim to offer any comment or suggestion beyond the one I have already made. And my right to make that is simply the universal right of a man to enlighten a woman when he sees her unconsciously placed in a false position.”

Lily smiled. “I suppose,” she rejoined, “that by a false position you mean one outside of what we call society; but you must remember that I had been excluded from those sacred precincts long before I met Mrs. Hatch. As far as I can see, there is very little real difference in being inside or out, and I remember your once telling me that it was only those inside who took the difference seriously.”

She had not been without intention in making this allusion to their memorable talk at Bellomont, and she waited with an odd tremor of the nerves to see what response it would bring; but the result of the experiment was disappointing. Selden did not allow the allusion to deflect him from his point; he merely said with completer fullness of emphasis: “The question of being inside or out is, as you say, a small one, and it happens to have nothing to do with the case, except in so far as Mrs. Hatch’s desire to be inside may put you in the position I call false.”

In spite of the moderation of his tone, each word he spoke had the effect of confirming Lily’s resistance. The very apprehensions he aroused hardened her against him: she had been on the alert for the note of personal sympathy, for any sign of recovered power over him; and his attitude of sober impartiality, the absence of all response to her appeal, turned her hurt pride to blind resentment of his interference. The conviction that he had been sent by Gerty, and that, whatever straits he conceived her to be in, he would never voluntarily have come to her aid, strengthened her resolve not to admit him a hair’s breadth farther into her confidence. However doubtful she might feel her situation to be, she would rather persist in darkness than owe her enlightenment to Selden.

“I don’t know,” she said, when he had ceased to speak, “why you imagine me to be situated as you describe; but as you have always told me that the sole object of a bringing-up like mine was to teach a girl to get what she wants, why not assume that that is precisely what I am doing?”

The smile with which she summed up her case was like a clear barrier raised against farther confidences: its brightness held him at such a distance that he had a sense of being almost out of hearing as he rejoined: “I am not sure that I have ever called you a successful example of that kind of bringing-up.”

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