Mingling
with the sense of snapped and bleeding ties was a longing, irrepressible,
profound, violent, that he might be humiliated, punished, brought to his
knees in penitence and abasement.
Her friendship with Sir Basil, his devotion to her, must be, though by no
means humiliating, something of a coal of fire laid on Jack's traitorous
head; and she saw at once that he was pleased, touched, but perplexed, by
what must seem to him an unforeseen smoothing of her mother's path. He was
there, she guessed, far more to see that her mother's path was made smooth
than to try and straighten out their own twisted and separate ways. He had
come for her mother, not for her; and Imogen did not know whether it was
more pain or anger that the realization gave her.
What puzzled him, what must have puzzled her mother, must puzzle, indeed,
anyone who perceived it,--except, no doubt, the innocent Sir Basil
himself,--was that this friendship took up most of Sir Basil's time.
To Sir Basil she stood for something lofty and exquisite that did not,
of course, clash with more rudimentary, if deeper, affections, but that,
perforce, made them stand aside for the little interlude where it soared
and sang. There was, for Imogen, a sharp sweetness in this fact and in
Jack's bewildered appreciation of it, though for her own consciousness
the triumph was no satisfying one. After all, of what use was it to soar
and sing if Sir Basil were to drop to earth so inevitably and so soon?
Outwardly, at all events, this unforeseen change in the situation gave her
all the advantage in her meeting with Jack.
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