It was a question, however, whether the
horror were changed for the better. Poor Gordon looked intensely sad and
grievously wronged. The keen resentment had faded from his face, but
an immense reproach was there--a heavy, helpless, appealing reproach.
Bernard saw that he had not a scene of violence to dread--and yet, when
he perceived what was coming, he would almost have preferred violence.
Gordon did not offer him his hand, and before Bernard had had time to
say anything, began to speak again, as if he were going on with what he
had been saying to Angela.
"You have done me a great wrong--you have done me a cruel wrong! I have
been telling it to Miss Vivian; I came on purpose to tell her. I can't
really tell her; I can't tell her the details; it 's too painful! But
you know what I mean! I could n't stand it any longer. I thought of
going away--but I could n't do that. I must come and say what I feel. I
can't bear it now."
This outbreak of a passionate sense of injury in a man habitually so
undemonstrative, so little disposed to call attention to himself, had in
it something at once of the touching and the terrible. Bernard, for an
instant, felt almost bewildered; he asked himself whether he had not,
after all, been a monster of duplicity.
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