Therein precisely lies the difference. Fe valuers PRESUME. Fi valuers will sort of be like "well maybe she didn't really mean it, because i know her and she's a good person" and will thus confront and actually ask and clarify. This has been the case frequently ime as well, in particular recently with an alpha i've typed as LII vs myself and an ExFp at work. The LII puts on this fake happy/nice act that is so obviously insincere, the insincerity having been confirmed to me recently by her going around spreading inaccurate rumors about me, probably because she is insecure about her own work. She pulled something like this with the ExFp a couple months ago, and so i had us all sit down to discuss what's been going on. Basically both myself and the ExFp want the LII to be more direct about things that are bothering her. The LII was like "but i didn't want to be rude" and "I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings"
. Yeah like spreading rumors about people behind their backs isn't rude and wont be hurtful.
She also has an issue about making wild extrapolations from things people say, like if someone makes a sarcastic joke, she'll sort of presume all sorts of moral implications and spread rumors about that. This is where,at least from the standpoint of myself and the ExFp, we would prefer that, instead of presuming things, she actually clarify those presumptions e.g. "wait, is this what you really meant???" I suspect this is what the ExFp's were doing in your case, Morcheeba. They saw you seemed to look angry or whatever, and they know that you're not that sort of person, or they're not sure if you are or not, so they ask to clarify.
I guess in the Fe culture it's considered bad/threatening/rude to ask about these things? Or Fe-valuing people just dont really pay attention to people's actual essence so asking is a moot point to them?