Armstrongis detained at his office until late this evening. Feeling inclined for exercise after his long sedentary day, he gets out of the trap near the place where he found Addie lying under the tree, and, walking across the grove, enters the shrubbery path bordering the tennis-ground, where the sound of voices at the further end attracts his attention. Dusk has already fallen, but he can clearly distinguish the figures of a man and woman walking arm-in-arm in front of him. His face darkens.
"Miss Pauline and one of her admirers," he mutters contemptuously. "She is carrying matters a little too far. I will let her know that these twilight rambles are not to my taste, and that as long as she remains an inmate of my house she must restrict her flirtations to more decorous hours—at least, out of doors."
He walks quickly after the pair along the mossy sward, then suddenly, when within thirty yards of them, he stops short and shrinks instinctively behind the sheltering ash-boughs, for he sees that the girl is not Pauline, but his own wife, and that her hands are clasped with an appearance of affectionateabandonon the arms of a man who, as well as he can make out in the gloom, is a perfect stranger.
Too astonished either to advance or recede, he stands motionless, thinking painfully and confusedly, then comes to the conclusion that he has made a mistake, that his fancy has tricked him. He is on the point of starting forward, when Addie's voice, low, troubled, eager, yet with a ring of unrestraint, of familiarity even, that makes his pulse throb with jealous pain, reaches him distinctly on the breathless night-air.
"Oh, no, no—not that—not that! You do not know what you ask—what it would cost me. He is good, generous, kind, unselfish even—not that, not that!"
There is a slight pause before the answer comes, in a voice so pure, sweet, and infinitely sad as to strike musically on the listener's tortured ear—a voice that Armstrong has never heard before, and yet that thrills through him with a strange vague sense of familiarity.
"Be it so—be it so. I will not ask what would cost you so much. Why should I, why should I, my dear, my dear? What hold have I on your life? Ah, none—none! You belong to another now, to another who you say is good, generous, kind, unselfish even, which I am not. Go back to your husband, your home, my girl, and forget that I darkened your path again—go back; I want nothing from you."
"And you," she asks wistfully—"you? What will you do? Where will you go?"
"I?" he questions drearily, passing his hand over her downcast head. "Do not ask,ma mie, do not ask."
"Yes, yes, you must tell me; I must know."
He stoops and puts his lips close to her ear. With a shrill cry she pushes him from her.
"You are trying to frighten me—to win me over. How cruel you are! You do not mean that?"
"No, no," he answers soothingly, "of course I don't. I can't imagine what made me blurt out such nonsense. Give me a kiss, a little one, a last kiss, and let me go."
"And let you go!" she echoes wildly. "How can I do that with such a threat ringing in my ears? Do you think I have no heart, no feeling left, because I am married—no memory?"
"You have a husband, good, kind, and—what is it?—generous and unselfish. Keep your heart, your feelings for him; cast out the memory of me from your life, for I will never cross your path again; forget me from this hour—let my fate not trouble you henceforth; do you hear? This is my last, my only request. Forget me; go back to your husband, Adelaide, and sleep out your life in peace and—and happiness by his side."
"Sleep out my life in peace and happiness," she echoes bitterly. "Vain request! You have murdered sleep for me to-night—destroyed happiness. Why did you come? Could you not have let me be? Oh, I have suffered since I saw you last—suffered, suffered! And now—now, when a glimpse of rest, of happiness even, was coming to me with the summer, you step in and take it from me. Heaven pity me, Heaven pity me!"
"Hush, hush!" he cries, his voice tremulous with pathos. "I will not have you say that. I want nothing from you—nothing, I tell you, but forgetfulness—nothing; blot out the memory of this hour, the memory of that cowardly unmeaning whisper—forget it—forget, my Adelaide!"
"I can not, I can not, for something tells me that it was not without meaning. And I loved you once—oh, yes, I loved you once! I was only a child, I know; but I loved you. Can I now live and feel myself your murderess? I can not."
Crying bitterly, she buries her face on his breast. He leans over her, murmuring tender, soothing words; while Armstrong, whose presence they are too absorbed, too agitated to notice, stands beside them, his hot breath almost fanning their averted faces, beads ofperspiration standing out on his forehead at the mighty effort he is making to restrain the instinct that urges him to hurl them asunder, trample to death the shapely sweet-voiced lover, and overwhelm her with the discovery of her treachery and deceit. But he restrains himself. After all, what is she to him, or he to her, his wife in name only? Her past he entered not into—their future will be spent apart. What have they in common? Nothing but the memory of two short weeks of union, which to him and her alike were clouded with bitterness, repulsion, and torturing recollection. Why then should he make himself ridiculous, pose as an outraged husband? He does not value her compassionate appreciation of his worth, does not want her tears, her kisses, her love. Why, then, in Heaven's name, should he interfere with her lover's enjoyment of them, the lover whom she jilted for his gold?
"Let her and him go to the dogs!" he mutters, striding away contemptuously. "Let the chapter of my married bliss close as it may, I care not a jot!"
He goes without one backward glance, and thus seals the fate of his life and hers.
The echo of his footsteps startles them; they move apart, look apprehensively around, but no further movement is to be heard.
Addie's face is white and still; she stands erect before her companion, and says slowly—
"You have conquered; I will do what you want. Let me go now."
He opens his arms rapturously, with an exclamation of delight, while she flies away, wringing her hands, and muttering piteously—"Heaven help me, Heaven help me!"
"And so," thinks Armstrong, as he walks blindly round and round the silent park, "it has ended like every commonplace three-volume novel, after all! My fate is in no wise different from that of the ponderous middle-aged husband of domestic drama. The lover has turned up at last; Jamie has come back from sea, as I might have guessed he would sooner or later, and his sweetheart tells him, almost in the words of the old song, that 'Auld Robin Gray's been a good man to me.' Generous, kind, unselfish I have been, she tells him. Well, so I have, I think; but therôleof Auld Gray begins to pall. I'll throw it up soon. I'll just give her a week clear from to-day to make what reparation she can, to confess all; and, if she does not, I will tell her what I know, what she hid from me so artlessly, then shut up Nutsgrove, take up my quartets in Kelvick—which I ought never to have left—and pack off my incumbrances—my precious wife and family—to old Jo at Leamington. Old Jo! I wonder was she in the plot, too? But of course she was; she did the 'pressin' sair' with a firm motherly hand! By Heaven, how cleverly they hid it all between them! How well Jamie was kept in the background—not the faintest suggestion of his existence! Even now I have not the least idea who he is; but I'll soon find out. As well as I could see in the gloaming, my rival is an uncommonly good-looking shapely fellow, and his voice—ah, well, his voice could win its way to any woman's heart! I wonder are they sighing out their sweet farewells still! It was a touching interview; but my poor little wife was not quite as temperate in her caresses as the younglady in the ballad. Jamie got more than one kiss to-night. Not that it matters to me whether it was one or a hundred—not a jot!"
"'If she be not fair to me,What care I how fair she be?'
"'If she be not fair to me,What care I how fair she be?'
"Not a jot—not a jot now!"
WhenArmstrong enters the drawing-room, half an hour later, there is small evidence of any volcanic element in the cheerful family group that meets his glance.
Pauline is lying in an easy-chair reading a novel, Addie and Lottie are engaged withbésique, the Widow Malone purring on the latter's lap.
"How late you are!" is Pauline's languid greeting. "We waited dinner fifteen minutes."
"I was detained at the office," he answers, throwing himself into a chair which commands a good view of the players, full face, three-quarters, and profile.
"Yes," he thinks after a few minutes' scrutiny, after intercepting a frightened, questioning, furtive glance—"yes, I think I am to be told of Jamie and his unexpected return from sea; she is evidently mustering courage to unburden her conscience. I wonder how long will she be getting up sufficient steam? I must give her a helping hand."
"What is it? You want to speak to me?" he says, as gently as he can, meeting a second imploring look, as they both stand at the foot of the stairs, when the party in the drawing-room has broken up for the night.
But she shrinks back in evident dismay.
"No, no! What—what made you think that? I—I don't want to say anything in particular, only, 'Good-night.'"
"I beg your pardon. Good-night."
Two days go by, and no confession comes; the third brings Robert on a hurried visit from Aldershot to consult his brother-in-law, about some hitch in his qualification for the cavalry.
At dinner Armstrong learns what he wants to know—the identity of his wife's lover.
"I say, girls," blurts out Robert, suddenly, "you'd never guess whom I met at Kelvick station this morning, not if I gave you twenty chances."
"We'll not try," retorts Pauline. "The weather is too hot for conundrums. Who was it, Robert?"
"Teddy Lefroy."
"No! You don't mean it! How was he looking? Did you know him at once? When is he coming to see us?" exclaim the two younger girls together.
Addie says not a word.
"Looking? Well, not A 1, I must say. I'm greatly afraid poorTed is going down the tree, at a smart pace too. I scarcely knew him at first, he had so run to seed both in looks and clothing. You remember what a dapper fellow he was four years ago."
"Poor Ted—I am sorry! He was too nice to last, I always thought," said Pauline, lightly. "Where is he now—with his regiment?"
"No; he has left his regiment, I regret to say, and is now thrown on society without resource or occupation. Punchestown finished him up, and the Beechers won't have anything more to say to him. He talks of going to the Colonies."
"Well, I hope he'll come to see us before he leaves this neighborhood. Did you ask him to, Bob?"
"I did, of course; but somehow he seemed strangely disinclined to come—gave a lot of patched-up excuses; however, he said he'd do his best. You'll find him greatly altered."
"Addie," says Lottie, joining in the conversation for the first time, "I'm sure it's on account of you he won't come—because you're married, you know."
There is a brief silence, broken by Addie asking confusedly, her cheeks flushing—
"What do you mean, Lottie? Why should my marriage prevent Teddy from coming here?"
"Oh, well, you know what I mean!" replies Lottie, giggling foolishly. "You may open your eyes as wide as you like, Addie; but you know perfectly well what I mean—you know that Teddy and you were awful spoons long ago. Don't you remember the night Hal and I hid up in the cherry-tree and saw you and him walking up and down the orchard with his arm round your waist, and how angry and red you got when Hal gave a big crow and called out, 'I see you—yah!' Don't you remember? And the photo we found in your desk wrapped up in—"
Here, with a suppressed cry, Lottie stops, the toe of Robert's boot having just met a tender part of her shin.
Armstrong rises to open the door for his wife, who passes out with flaming cheeks and downcast head, then resumes his seat by his brother-in-law's side, and they sit together smoking and talking business far into the night.
Four days more go by, and the week of grace is nearly spent, when one evening a knock comes at Armstrong's study-door, and his wife enters, pale and wild-looking, her hair blown about, and the skirt of her dress wet, as if she has just been trailing it through damp grass.
"She has had another interview with Jamie, and now for the upshot!" he thinks grimly. "I must try to tune my nerves for hysterics, I suppose. My wife's emotions are always dished up hot."
"You wish to speak to me?" he asks gravely. "Won't you sit down?"
"I want to know if you can give me five hundred pounds," she says, in a clear mechanical voice, as if she were repeating a lesson.
"Five hundred pounds?" he echoes blankly.
"Yes, five hundred pounds, can you give it to me to-night? That is all I want to say to you."
"I can give you a check for that amount, which you can cash, in any of the banks in Kelvick to-morrow. Will that do?"
"Yes, that will do."
He fills in the check, signs it, and hands it to her without a word.
"Thank you," she says, huskily. "It is a big sum. I—I may be able to repay it; but I don't know when."
"Pray don't mention it. I consider the money well laid out," he says shortly.
"I understand you—oh, I understand you! The money has bought you your freedom—that is what you mean," she says, fixing her wild eyes on his face. "Any lingering spark of—of affection, of esteem, of pity you still had for me is gone now. Yes? I thought so—I thought so; but I could not help it; the pressure brought to bear on me was too strong. I could not help it! Oh, if you knew—if I could only tell you—"
"Pray don't offer any explanation. I assure you I seek none. I am quite satisfied that you wanted the money badly, or you would not have applied to me."
He busies himself stamping some letters for the post; while she stands by staring at him helplessly, the check lying under her nerveless hand.
He looks up at her after a moment, a grim elation flooding his soul—looks at her standing mute in her utter abasement before him, cowering, shrinking, a thing too mean for pity, too despicable for wrath.
"And to think that I wasted the best wealth of my life on such a woman as she," he mutters, turning away in burning self-contempt—"to think that I lay awake at night thirsting for her love, treasuring her every wanton smile, gloating over every kind word she gave me—to think that in this very room scarce ten days ago, she almost tricked me into believing in her again, a woman who could stoop to sponge on me, her much-enduring husband, to sponge for the lover who comes cringing round my gates, his craven hand outstretched to rob me of my substance as well as my honor! They are a noble race, these Lefroys! It was a lift in the world for me, Tom Armstrong, the foundling, to take one of them to my bosom! Faugh!"
"What do you want? Can I do anything more for you?" he says, sternly, turning round, to find her standing by his side.
"No, nothing—nothing," she pants, dry-eyed. "I only want you to say something to me—it does not matter what—to abuse me and mine, to give voice to your contempt, to tell me what you feel."
"What good would it do you or me?" he asks roughly. "You can guess pretty well what I feel; my emotions are not very complex at this moment, I can tell you."
She wrings her hands, and tries to speak; but only a gurgling sound comes. He looks on, smiling lightly.
"Oh, if it could only turn out a dream—all a dream!" she whispers hoarsely. "If this year could be blotted out, and you could find yourself coming home one May evening, and see me lying in the wood, you would drive on and leave me there, would you not, Tom?"
"No," he says, after a short pause. "On consideration, I think I should stop and send you home to your aunt in my trap."
"You would not bring me here?"
"Certainly not—that is, presuming the panorama of this happy year had been foreshadowed to me in sleep. And you—you surely would not have me do so, eh? Your present feelings tally with mine, do they not?"
"My present feelings! Will you let me tell you what they are? If—if I had this year to spend over again, if we had, as we so futilely presume, lived through it in a painful sleep, its every pang, its every troubled experience—"
"Yes, I follow you."
"And you were to bring me here and ask me to be your wife again, my answer would be 'Yes.' I would marry you, Tom, if you had not a penny in the world to tempt me with—marry you if I knew you to be a vagrant, a homeless vagrant, as they say you once were, wandering through the streets of Kelvick, and that I had to share a garret with you until the day I died! You don't believe me—ah, you don't believe me?"
She approaches, and lays a shaking hand on his arm. He turns with a fierce oath, his face blazing with scorn, repulsion, contempt unutterable, and, hurling her from him, strides from the room.
"Believe you? Believe you? By Heaven, I don't!" are his hot parting words.
Her head strikes rather sharply against the woodwork of the window; she remains for a few moments with eyes closed, struggling against nausea, then lifts her handkerchief to her mouth, from which a thin red stream is issuing slowly.
"Getup, Miss Pauline, get up quick!"
"What is the matter, Sally?" cries Pauline, rubbing her eyes. "How funny you look! Has anything happened?"
"Hush! Yes; your sister—Miss Addie—is—is missing! She is not in her room, and her bed has not been slept in all night."
"Addie—Addie missing? I—I don't understand! What do you mean, Sally? Missing—where?"
"Heaven knows—Heaven knows!" cries the old woman, wringing her hands. "I believe she had words with her husband after dinner last night. She went to her room, saying she had a headache, and—and no one has seen or heard anything of her since."
Pauline, now thoroughly awake and startled, springs out of bed.
"But her husband, Sally! He—he knows where she is? What does he say?"
"I told him, and he said nothing—absolutely nothing; he didn't seem surprised or startled, but just went into his study, locked the door after him, and has been there ever since."
"I—I don't think there is anything to be alarmed about," says Pauline, her teeth chattering nevertheless; "it is a sudden quarrel, I suppose. She—she is very hot tempered, you know, and has gone off in a huff for a couple of days to Aunt Jo. Give me a bit of paper, Sally. I'll scribble a telegram to Leamington, and we'll have an answer in half an hour, and—wait—wait—I'll send another to Bob—he'll be wanted on the spot to patch up matters. Now,Sally, I'll depend on you to keep it as dark as possible. Don't let Lottie know on any account, or the other servants, if possible. We'll have it all right before the evening, never fear!"
Three hours later Robert Lefroy, warm, dusty, and excited from suspense—for the telegram has told him nothing but that he is wanted immediately—arrives at Nutsgrove, and is received by Pauline with scared white face in the dining-room.
"What is it? What has happened? Any one ill—hurt?" he asks breathlessly.
"No, no! Speak lower, and keep—keep composed as I am. It's Addie—she's missing! Since last night nobody knows what—what has become of her. Listen, listen—don't speak yet! She had a row with her husband after dinner, and must have gone away soon after, and—"
"Yes—Aunt Jo? Have you tele—"
"I have, and she's not there, and has not been there. I've made cautious inquiries at the farm; but no one saw her there either; and—and I don't know what to do, I'm so frightened!"
"Her husband—Tom—what does he say? What is he doing?"
"He has been locked up in his study all the morning, and I—I was afraid to go in to him. I thought that I would wait until you came, that you would—would manage better than I should."
"I will go to him at once. Give me a glass of wine, sister."
"But, Bob darling, listen—listen to what they say! Oh, it's dreadful—dreadful to have such—such vile suspicions afloat!"
"What suspicions? What d'ye mean?"
"Sally heard in the kitchen, half an hour ago, that one of the maids, seeing off a friend by the 10.30 up-train last night, is sure—sure she saw Addie at the station, going off in the train with—with a stranger, who—who took her ticket for her!"
"A stranger! What stranger? What the deuce do you mean, Pauline?" cries the boy fiercely, shaking off her clinging arms.
"Oh, I don't mean anything! It's only what they say, the wretches! And that is not all; they say she—she was heard two or three times out in the grounds last week talking to some man and crying bitterly. The cook's little sister and brother heard her one night, and saw her distinctly."
"Pauline! How could you degrade yourself by listening to such low, vile slanders? It is infamous!"
"It was Sally who told me—told me in order that her husband might know at once and take some measures to stop these scandalous lies. He has not stirred from his study to-day."
"I will go to him at once. I'll stir him pretty quick, I can tell you! My poor little sister! I'll see you avenged," says Robert fiercely. He knocks at the door boldly. After a few seconds he is admitted; and stands facing his brother-in-law, who greets him gravely.
"Tom, Tom," he bursts out at once, "what—what is the meaning of all this? What is there between you and Addie? Where has she gone to? What does it mean?"
"Your sister has left me, Robert. I know nothing more abouther movements than this note will tell you. I found it this morning on my table, her wedding-ring inclosed."
Robert takes up the note and reads slowly the following—
"This is to tell you I am going. I see it is all over at last. I could not live with you again after your words to me this evening. You have done your best, but you have failed. Heaven reward you and keep you all the same! Do not ever think of me again; I am going to him who has brought this ruin on me; it is his duty to bear with me now for the few short years I may yet have to drag on my wretched life.Adelaide."
"This is to tell you I am going. I see it is all over at last. I could not live with you again after your words to me this evening. You have done your best, but you have failed. Heaven reward you and keep you all the same! Do not ever think of me again; I am going to him who has brought this ruin on me; it is his duty to bear with me now for the few short years I may yet have to drag on my wretched life.
Adelaide."
Robert raises a bloodless face and stares stupidly at his brother-in-law.
"I—I don't understand. What can she mean? For Heaven's sake, Armstrong, can't you speak? 'I am going to him who has brought this—this ruin on me.' She—she must be mad—stark staring mad! Whom—whom does she mean? Tom, Tom, for Heaven's sake, tell me!"
"She means that she has gone to the man," says Armstrong, with contemptuous sternness, "whom you forced her to jilt in order to marry me."
The boy's expression of bewilderment is so genuine as to impress him for a moment.
"The man we forced her to jilt to marry you! The mystery thickens. She jilted no man to marry you, Armstrong; I'll swear it on the Bible, if you like. You were the only man who ever asked her in marriage; there was no one else—we knew no one, she went nowhere. You must be mad yourself to say such a thing!"
"There was not this cousin—Edward Lefroy—the casual mention of whose name disturbed her so much a few evenings ago that she had to leave the room in your very presence?"
"Edward Lefroy—Teddy Lefroy!" he retorts impatiently. "Why, he was only a boy, a schoolboy, whom we looked on as a brother, whom—whom Addie has not met since she was a child! Teddy Lefroy? Your suspicion is absurd, below contempt, Armstrong! I—I am ashamed of you!"
Armstrong only smiles very bitterly.
"You will not think my suspicions below contempt when I tell you, my boy, that I myself saw your sister a few evenings ago crying in this man's arms, bemoaning her fate, struggling weakly against the temptation into which she has now fallen, urging—"
"You saw her—you saw her, you heard her! Armstrong, I don't believe you!" he bursts out impulsively. "I don't believe you! You were dreaming, drunk—"
"No, Robert, no," he answers drearily. "I was quite sober, and I was standing within a few yards of them both. There was no mistake—I heard and saw them distinctly."
"And—and you did not interfere?"
"No. Why should I? Your sister and I had lived for many months in a mere semblance of union, her actions were quite free. Besides, I thought that worldly consideration, her affection for you, would prevent her from taking the extreme step she did."
"I don't believe it, I don't believe it!" cries Robert, his voice struggling with rising sobs. "I don't care what you saw or what you heard, Thomas Armstrong! I have known my sister for twenty years, and you for one, and I'll stake her honor, her virtue, her truth against your word any day, and maintain it before the world too! How dare you say such things of her, you—you cowardly low-bred upstart! Oh, Tom, Tom," pleads the poor lad, hot tears raining down his cheeks unchecked, "look me in the face and tell me you don't believe it! You don't, you can't, you dare not believe it! Think of her as you saw her daily amongst us here—so light-hearted, careless, impulsive, so quick to resent injustice, so tender with suffering, so anxious to please you, to entice you into her innocent girlish pleasures, so dainty in her speech, in her actions—dainty even to prudishness! You—you have seen her in society among men; but you have never detected a light word, a flirting glance. No, no! She was voted slow, heavy in hand, full of airs among our fellows. Men never dared try to flirt with her as they do with other young married women, I tell you. Tom, Tom, think of all this, and say—say you don't believe it—say you will put your shoulder to the wheel and help me to clear up the mystery, find her, and bring her home to us again! Addie, Addie, the best of us all, the sweetest, the most unselfish, the truest-hearted! She would go through fire and water for any one she loved. You don't know her as I do. Listen, Tom, listen! A few years ago, when I had scarlet fever, and they said I could not recover, she ran away from the farm to which they had all been sent, climbed into my room through the window, hid under the bed when the doctor came, and remained to nurse me until I was well. And you think—you think that she—"
He stops and looks imploringly into Armstrong's sad stern face; but he answers only by laying a pitying hand on the boy's shoulder.
"I tell you, I tell you," he continues passionately, shaking off his hand, "that she was nearer heaven than any of us, all her life through—the best of us all, whom every one loved, whom every one turned to for help, for pity, for affection—the best of us all—the best of us all! You know that yourself—you, her husband. I have seen it in your face—ay, twenty times. And you believe that Heaven would let such as she become a—"
The harsh word dies on his lips, his head falls forward on his outstretched arms.
"Robert," answers Armstrong, after a short pause, "you plead well. There is much truth in what you urge; but I, alas, can convince you in your own words! Your sister was hot, impulsive, warm-hearted, and—and would go through fire and water for any one she loved. She is doing so now, Heaven help her!"
"I don't believe it, I don't believe it! Give me proofs!"
"Proofs!" he repeats impatiently. "Great Heaven, boy, what surer proof could I give you than her own words? Read her confession again. You—you don't suppose it's a fraud? What motive could I have in forging the record of my dishonor?"
"I can't understand it, I can't understand it!"
"I can, and you will also, when I tell you that the villain, in my hearing, threatened to take his own life if she refused to listen tohim. Judge the effect of such a threat on any one of her impulsive nature."
"I—I wish I had killed him that day I met him! Oh if I had only known, only guessed! Even now, Armstrong, I tell you I can not realize it—I can not! He was utterly penniless too; he asked me to lend him a five-pound note, and told me, if he could manage his passage-money, he would sail in the 'Chimborazo' for Melbourne on the seventeenth."
"He has managed his passage-money. Your sister got five hundred pounds from me last evening."
The words seemed to have slipped out unconsciously, for the deep flush of shame that spreads over Robert's face is reflected as warmly in the speaker's the same moment.
There is a pause, broken only by Robert's hot panting breath; then Armstrong speaks again.
"The 'Chimborazo,' you say? She sailed from Gravesend on the seventeenth, and takes in passengers at Plymouth two days later. To-day is—let me see—the nineteenth. Yes, they would be just in time, leaving here last night, to sail in her."
"Tom," says Robert, rising to his feet, "will you grant me a last request? Come with me now at once, and see if—if your suspicion is correct, if we can find any trace of them on board—I—I mean at the shipping-agents, among the list of cabin-passengers. Will you, will you?"
"Yes, my boy, if you like," he answers wearily. "But, if my suspicion is verified to-day, you must never allude to this subject again before me. I do not object to let you and yours continue to look on me as a friend, but you must forget henceforth that you ever called me brother-in-law."
"Yes," Robert answers, his handsome head downcast, his burning eyes painfully averted—"yes, I—I can easily do that, because—because, I shall forget I ever had a sister. Armstrong, Armstrong, you—you understand what I feel, if—if this should prove true. I—I may not be able to speak to you again; but you understand, don't you, that the pain, the disgrace, the wrong that we—that she has brought on your life can never, if I live to be an old man, be entirely wiped from mine? You understand," he continues, with flashing eyes, the veins in his neck swelling with suppressed emotion, "that, if—if either of them crossed my path at this moment, I should have as little compunction in striking them dead at my feet as I should have in crushing out the life of the meanest, most harmless insect that crawls on earth? You—you believe me, don't you?"
"Yes, Robert, I do," he answers, grasping Robert's outstretched hand, feeling for the first time in his life a sense of respect, of esteem almost, for the unfortunate boy.
Thenext morning, when, ill with crying, Pauline opens her swollen eyes, she finds a letter from Robert lying on the table by her bedside. Its contents bring on a fresh outburst of grief that lasts far into the day.
"You are to forget," he writes, "that you ever had an elder sister;you are to blot her out from your life as if she had never been, to remove all traces of her existence from your sight, never to sully your lips by uttering her name, if you wish still to call me brother."
Then he tells her that among the list of passengers that have sailed that morning for Melbourne in the "Chimborazo" they have seen the names of "Mr. and Mrs. Edward Lefroy."
When, late in the afternoon, Pauline creeps down-stairs, she finds the stillness of the grave shrouding the house.
Armstrong has not returned; he does not cross the threshold of Nutsgrove. Lottie has been sent up to Sallymount Farm to spend the day, and most of the servants, with Mrs. Turner's approval, have leave granted during the absence of the master and mistress, who, she elaborately explains, have gone to the seaside for a few weeks' change of air. A futile explanation. They all know, as well as if the news were published in that morning's "Times," that the establishment is broken up for good, and that they will never gather again in cheerful circle round the roomy hearth of the servants' hall, discussing the goings on of the folk upstairs, laying jocular bets as to which of Miss Pauline's lovers will win the day, and as to how long the master will stand Mr. Lefroy's imperious ways,et cætera, and other topics of a like personal but highly interesting nature.
When the long spring day is coming at last to a close, Pauline dries her eyes, rings for a cup of tea, and then, drawing her desk to the couch on which she is lying, after some troubled deliberation writes a note, which early next morning is put into the hands of Mr. Everard, then smoking a cigar on the deck of the "Sea-Gull," lying at anchor between Southsea and Ryde.
"Nutsgrove, Thursday."I am alone, and in deep distress. All day long I have sighed for the sound of a true friend's voice, for the clasp of a comforting hand on mine. I thought of you—I don't know why. Can you come toPauline?"
"Nutsgrove, Thursday.
"I am alone, and in deep distress. All day long I have sighed for the sound of a true friend's voice, for the clasp of a comforting hand on mine. I thought of you—I don't know why. Can you come to
Pauline?"
"No, Pauline, I can't come! Sorry to disoblige a young lady; but I can't come to you. Certainly not!" he mutters stoutly, pacing the deck with hurried step, the letter fluttering in his hand. "Certainly not, Miss Pauline! You've signaled too late—too late, young lady; you must get some other hand than mine to clasp you in your distress. Saunderson's paw ought to do the business; it's big enough, at any rate. 'Alone and in deep distress.' By Jove, I wonder what it means? She must have quarreled with her sister, or with Armstrong. Well, well, it's no business of mine; I won't bother any more about it. Ah, here's the morning paper! I wonder if Carleton has won his race? Hang it, I've thrown away my cigar! Let me see—Cambridgeshire meeting. Ah, here it is!"
But, alas, Everard can extract no information from the sporting-column this morning, for all up and down the page the words are dancing in letters of fire—
"Can you come—can you come—can you come to Pauline?"
He throws down the newspaper in disgust, and exclaims irritably—
"I can't, I can't, I tell you—I can't!"
Half an hour later two sailors are pulling him as hard as they can to Portsmouth Harbor, whence an express bears him northward to Pauline in her distress.
Long before he arrives, the first half hour after he enters Nutshire, he knows the reason of her hurried appeal, and the news of the scandal—with which the whole of Kelvick is ringing—stupefies the young man almost as much as it did poor Robert. He sits staring blindly at the flying landscape, trying to realize the startling truth; but he can only picture Addie as he last saw her but one week before, standing under the big magnolia, her hand clasped in his smiling up into her husband's placid face.
"They're a bad lot—a bad lot!" he mutters weakly. "What's bred in the bone comes out in the flesh! A bad lot, those Lefroys! Thank Providence, I've had nothing to say to them. Poor Armstrong, what an—"
"Jack—Mr. Everard—won't you say good morning to me? My hand has been outstretched for the last two minutes."
He turns quickly, to find a young lady seated opposite to him, a young lady with whom he has been on terms of almost brotherly intimacy since he was a long-legged youth in knickerbockers and she a chubby-faced child in stiff-tucked shirts—Miss Cicely Deane, his rector's model daughter.
She is a small, prim little person, with pretty brown eyes and a soft drawling voice that makes very sweet music in her father's church, and draws many wandering spirits from things of earth, from contemplation of their neighbors' bonnets, to thoughts of Him whom they have met to praise in concert.
"Saint Cecilia, you here?" he exclaims in surprise. "You must have got in at Kelvick. I was looking out of the window, and never heard you."
"Yes, Jack, you were wrapped up in a 'referee,' as Mr. Weller would call it—I hope it was a pleasant one. I went over to Kelvick early this morning to consult Miss Challice about the children's school-feast on Thursday; it is to be a great affair this year."
"Ah, indeed! And how are you all doing since I saw you last, Cicely? Father, mother well? Sisters and brothers ditto? That's right, I needn't ask about the rest—the sick, the old, the maimed, the grumbler, the impostor; they—"
"We always have them among us. Yes, Jack, I thank you on their behalf for kind inquiries, and also for the check you sent me before leaving; it is that which has enabled me to invite four hundred little Kelvickites to enjoy the green fields and woods of Broom Hill on Thursday with our own flock. But tell me—what has brought you to this part of the country again? I thought you intended spending the summer yachting with your—"
"And so I do. I only ran up to-day on a matter of—of urgent business. I'm returning to the 'Gull' in the morning, and we sail for Norway at the end of the week."
"You will dine with us this evening, won't you, Jack? I dare say you won't find things very comfortable at Broom Hill, returning so unexpectedly."
"Thank you, Cicely; I'll dine with you with much pleasure. Seven o'clock, isn't it?"
"Yes—here is our station. Hand me those parcels—tenderly, please. What—are you not getting out too?"
"Ah, yes—no—yes! By Jove, I'm too late! Returning by next train!" he shouts.
The carriage door is banged, there is a shrill whistle, and the train is moving smoothly to the next station, Nutsford.
"I—I meant to have got out," he mutters blankly—"of course I did. Hanged if I know what came over me. However, I suppose I had better go on now, after having come so far. Who's afraid? I'll pretty soon let her understand the light I view her distress in, let her know she can't make a cat's-paw of me to get back to respectability, comfort, and position! Who's afraid? Not I!"
Thus plumed with self-confidence, his doughty arm braced to meet Miss Lefroy's hand in the cool platonic grasp of friendship and vague sympathy, Mr. Everard reaches Nutsgrove. There is not a sound of life about the place; the blinds are all down, and old Sally Turner, the erst dignified housekeeper, opens the hall door for him and bids him enter.
"You wish to see Miss Lefroy, sir? Yes, she is at home. To the left, in school-room, sir, she will receive you."
He finds himself standing in a darkened room, and for a few moments, after the glare of unshadowed day, can distinguish nothing; then he sees a tall willowy figure dressed in black advancing toward him. Pauline, pale as a ghost, her starry eyes full of unshed tears, her mouth quivering and uplifted, looking more beautiful in her abashed woe than she looked crowned with diamonds, flushed with triumph, as he saw her last, lays her hand timidly on his shrinking shoulder.
"You have come, my friend, my friend!"
Some six hours later Everard is seated in the Rectory garden, helping Miss Deane to pin small bits of numbered paper on a miscellaneous collection of articles that are to delight four hundred smoky little souls on Thursday; but his thick lazy fingers do but little work compared with those of his companion, who watches his movements with some anxiety.
"Jack," she exclaims at last, in temperate expostulation, "please—please don't put a pin through her nose! That doll is a special prize, and the number will be found quite as easily on any part of her skirt. Perhaps you had better let me finish—"
"Cicely," he says hurriedly, his face flushing, "I want to tell you something. I—I thought I should like to tell you first. You remember when we were children I always came to you—"
"Yes, I remember. What is your news, Jack? Something nice—and important I can see by your face."
"I am going to be married, Cicely, to the dearest, sweetest, loveliest girl in England!"
"To Miss Lefroy?"
"Yes, yes—to whom else?"
"I—I congratulate you, Jack, most sincerely," says Cicely, in her little prim measured accents, putting her hand in his, first waitingto adjust the position of the pin in the doll's polonaise. "I saw you admired her very much all last winter; she is very beautiful. You have not been long engaged?"
"Only since this afternoon, and—and I don't want to make any secret of my great happiness and—luck," he says warmly, almost pugnaciously, looking her in the face.
"Of course not," she answers; but, under his steady questioning gaze a faint pink stains her cheek, and he knows that the story of the fallen sister has reached even this sheltered little vestal.
"Well, Cicely, I think I'll take myself off and tell your parents of my happiness. I'm not of much use to you, I fear."
"Not much in your present state of mind certainly," she says, with a bright cold smile.
"And, besides, there are two sons of Leviticus prowling outside, gazing at me, their eyes glowing with most unholy fire. I hope their fists will prove steadier than mine, though I doubt it. Oh, Saint Cecilia, Saint Cecilia, I wonder how many slaughtered curates lie on your soul! Who would be your father's henchman in the cloth?"
He goes, humming a rollicking love-song of old Tom Moore's, and the curates come in and bravely stick, stitch, plaster, and sort the charitable chattels, and make discreet but eager love to their rector's daughter—a young lady who, besides her many moral and personal attractions, inherits a snug little fortune of fifteen thousand pounds from a maternal aunt, and is the granddaughter of a mighty earl with two fat livings in his gift. But their vows and smiles are all in vain, for Cicely bestowed that otherwise well-ordered piece of mechanism, her heart, one January noon, some three years before, on a fresh-faced Eton lad who, at the imminent risk of his life, unaided, rescued her and a school-friend of her own age from a cruel death on the day the ice broke so unexpectedly on the lake in Saunderson Park—and this young gentleman was, alas, the lucky lover of Miss Lefroy!
Thesummer goes by drowsily. Before the brambles are tinted a purplish red, before the leaves of the spotted sycamore and tawny beech strew the crisp carpet of the grove, the name, almost the memory, of Adelaide Lefroy has passed from Nutshire. Fresher scandals have cropped up. A certain great lady, mature in years, has seen fit to elope one morning with her brother's stud-groom, a good-looking lad of twenty, and so the more commonplace misdemeanor of the younger woman has to make way for this startling event. Then the races come on, followed by a big fancy-ball and a lawn-tennis tournament—the first held in the county. Altogether the people have enough to busy their minds and their tongues about besides those unfortunate and disreputable Lefroys, who, moreover, have had the grace to retire from the scene at once and supply no further food for popular comment for the time being.
Pauline and her sister go to Aunt Jo, under whose protection the former intends to remain until the new year, when she is to return to her native soil as Mrs. Everard of Broom Hill.
Robert has established himself in London, and is reading steadily for his "exam." He refused at first to continue preparing for the army, and offered to take his young brother with him and emigrate to some fever-haunted colony on the coast of Brazil; but Armstrong vehemently interposed, and pointed out to him that his only chance of success lay in sticking to the profession that he had chosen. And so Master Robert, after some demur, gave in, and Hal remained a pupil at Dr. Jellett's, where, in the course of the summer, having worked himself into the first cricket eleven, he speedily forgets the fate, bitterer than death, that divides him forever from her who was more of mother than sister to him during his boyhood. He forgets her more easily and naturally than his elder brother, who, in the early vehemence of his indignation, thrust the slippers her fingers worked for him into the fire, mutilated half a dozen handkerchiefs marked with her hair, his last birthday-gift from her just before he joined the militia, tore to shreds the picture of a grinning chubby baby seated on Aunt Jo'smoire antiqueknee which he found in an album on that lady's table, besides other acts of theatrical repudiation, which called forth a murmur of remonstrance from Pauline—Pauline, too scared and cowed at first to realize as she does later the full measure, the heartless selfishness of her sister's conduct.
The first month after the catastrophe is a very trying one to poor Miss Darcy, whose grief is almost dumb, paralyzed by the shock that has come to her without a word or sign of preparation, but which is none the less bitter for all that. Pauline makes no effort to lighten her burden, but sits all day long, when she is not writing to her betrothed, in gloomy apathy, brooding over her wrongs, over the comforts, the luxury she has lost, the position as wife of a wealthy baronet she almost grasped, now out of her reach forever,et cætera. And Lottie—poor, foolish Lottie—the child's tearful questions and piteous pertinent inquiries for her dearest Addie, so painful to parry, make the hours of day so unbearable that Miss Darcy at last packs her off to a day-school in the neighborhood, where soon the variety of her new life and the excitement of making friends have the desired effect. Addie's name comes day by day less often to her lips, and at last is heard no more.
Nutsgrove is closed; every window is heavily barred, carpets and curtains are rolled up in cumbrous bundles, the pieces of furniture in their holland blouses looking like ungainly ghosts in the deadened light to poor Sally Turner, as she wanders weekly through the house, incensing her master's property with red pepper to keep away the moths, laying the dust with her fruitless tears.
Armstrong is re-established in his old quarters at Kelvick, both in appearance and manner so little affected by his domestic calamity that even his nearest friends forbear to sympathize with him, and come in time to believe that Mrs. Armstrong's elopement has, after the first sting, been accepted by the husband as an unqualified blessing rather than a painful bereavement. But he steadfastly refuses the suggestion of Robert Lefroy and of others to seek redress and freedom through the arm of the law, grimly stating that divorce to him would be a useless instrument, as he has had quite enough of matrimony to last him his life.
In July the election comes on; and, after a most exciting and energetic contest with a skillful and popular opponent, whose father is one of the Government leaders, Armstrong is returned as Liberal member for his native town, which for many years he represents, to the unqualified satisfaction of his constituents.
The county sees little of him; he courteously but persistently refuses all invitations to return to the society to which his marriage introduced him, but,en revanche, seeks distraction in unlimited aldermanic feasts, sober supper and card parties, and all kinds of corporate festivities, and entertains also very successfully in his own house—only gentlemen, of course. Young ladies no longer look on him with eyes of interest or speculation, and Miss Challice never beckons him to her tea-table now; but, when, toward the end of the year, that young lady marries one of the curates who has vainly sighed at Miss Deane's feet, his wedding-gift to her is viewed both by her mother and her female friends as a fitting act of compensation for the unmeaning and deceptive attention he paid her in the old days, before his own most disastrous connection with that wretched young woman who inveigled him so disastrously.
One evening in late December he sits in his office frowning discontentedly at the contents of a letter lying on his desk in Aunt Jo's old-fashioned spider-web handwriting. The note is affectionate and mournful in tone, and contains a request—it is almost an appeal—that he will be present at Pauline's marriage on the 14th proximo.
"I suppose I shall have to go; but it will be an awful nuisance," he thinks fretfully. "From the way she puts it, I don't see how I can well refuse; and, poor old soul, she has had so much to contend against, so much trouble in her old age, that it would be churlish of—By Jove, here comes the bridegroom-elect to enforce the invitation. No quarter for me now! Well, Everard, how are you? Come in, come in—I'm quite alone."
Mr. Everard enters with a rather rakish swagger, his face very red, his blue eyes sparkling with what Armstrong thinks a jovial vinous glow. He throws himself into a chair, stretches his legs well before him, and says huskily—
"Seen the morning's paper, Armstrong?"
"Yes. Why do you ask?"
"Births, deaths, and marriages?"
"No."
"No? Then there's something among them will interest you. See here, old man."
He takes a crumpled newspaper from his breast, and lays it on the desk, pointing with moist shaking finger to the following announcement, which Armstrong reads aloud—
"On the 27th instant, by special license, Sir Arthur Saunderson, Bart., of Saunderson Park, Nutshire, Captain, Grenadier Guards, to Pauline Rose, daughter of the late Colonel Lefroy of Nutsgrove."
"Hoax?" asks Armstrong breathlessly.
"Not a bit of it," Everard answers spasmodically—bonâ fide. "Bolted three days ago; letter from the aunt last night, another from her ladyship this morning announcing the fact, asking forgiveness, explaining all most satisfactorily. Saunderson's been on her trackfor the last month, dogging her everywhere. Found in the end she loved him better than me; wouldn't wreck my happiness, and so bolted. Beautiful letter; I'll show it to you."
Armstrong springs from his desk with a loud harsh laugh that echoes weirdly through the silent room; then, going up to his flushed, scowling visitor, seizes his hand with a grip that makes him wince:
"I congratulate you—I congratulate you, Everard, my boy: you're in luck, and no mistake! I don't know when I heard a bit of news that gave me greater pleasure. You're an honest lad; I liked you from the first, and would have saved you if I could; but I saw it would have been of no use. And now the baronet has done the job for you! Long life to him—long life to him! Stay and dine with me, Jack, and we'll drink his health and her ladyship's in the best bumper in my cellar. More power to the pair of them—more power to them, I say!"
Everard frees his hand sullenly, and says, with an awkward impatience—
"All right, all right, Armstrong; you mean well, but—but—that will do. Stay and dine with you—eh? Don't mind if I do; we ought to be good company, by Jove, for we're both knocking about in much the same boat, you and I."
"In much the same boat," Armstrong interrupts, with another grating laugh—"in much the same boat, you call it—ha, ha! Not so, not so, my boy; for you have gallantly drifted into port, your keel just a trifle scratched, while I—I have been buffeted among the rocks and quicksands of holy matrimony, and had the waters pitching into my raked sides. In—in much the same boat, you call it! By Jove, that is a good one, you know!"
"Oh, Armstrong, Armstrong, shut up! You mean well, I know," cries the young man bitterly, his head dropping upon his breast; "but you can't understand what I feel, or how I loved that girl almost from the first day I saw her, how I would have crawled to the end of the world to give her an hour's pleasure. To think—to think she'd treat me so, cast me aside for that yellow-faced hound!"
"With his title and his twelve thousand a year. Come, Everard, come; do her at least the justice to admit that she never tried to deceive you as to her character, never tried to hide from you that she was vain, worldly, ambitious, and candidly selfish, that her aim in life was to marry as high up the tree as she could reach. You must admit that you saw through her almost from the start, that you walked with unbandaged eyes into the pitfall she prepared for you. Why, man alive, I've heard you scores of times railing against her heartlessness, her selfish—"
"Oh, what does all that signify? Nothing—nothing; I loved her—I loved her!" he reiterates irritably. "And, if you had ever loved any one when you were my age, Armstrong, you'd find such considerations afford precious little comfort to you in—in a crisis like this. I loved her, her selfishness, her ambition, her worldliness, the queenly calm with which she requited my slavish worship, her indifference—everything about her I loved! Oh, Pauline, Pauline!"
Armstrong smiles and does not again try to pour oil on the troubled waters, foreseeing, with a sense of relief, that the worldlyviolence of his friend's woe will soon wear itself out, the scratch be healed with the gracious aid of time.
Everard stays to dinner. During that trying repast and for many hours afterward, far into the dismal night, he treats his patient host to the full flavor of his bereavement in its many hysterical phases. He is by turns morose, wrathful, fiendishly sarcastic, buoyant, bloodthirsty, and maudlin; but, when he rises at last to depart, Armstrong has successfully dissuaded him from his purpose of seeking death at once, and has almost induced him to stick to his colors at Broom Hill, and not show the white feather when the Saundersons return to Nutshire from the honeymoon.
"Be a man, be a man, Everard!" he urges vehemently. "Show her and him of what stuff you are made. Why in the world should you go and leave your place in the middle of the hunting-season and wander over the world, bellowing your woes and labeling yourself a jilted man, an object of pity and derision to the whole county? Stay and face them—stay and face them, my boy."
"I'll try—I'll try, by Jove, I will!" he answers, fervently wringing his friend's hand. "I say, Armstrong, do you know, you're a thundering good fellow, you are. And you'll come and look me up sometimes at Broom Hill if I screw up my courage to stay, won't you? There's a bond of union between us, you know. I'm in as bad a boat as you, any day, say what you like. But—but there's justice and mercy somewhere, isn't there, old fellow—if we believe what the parsons tell us—eh?"
"I hope so," says Armstrong, a little wearily. "Good-night!"
Everarddoes not go abroad. He hears the cheers of the tenantry assembled to greet the bride and bridegroom as they sweep past his gate to the park, and scarcely winces. He hunts almost daily, and appears in society just as usual; but he does not meet Lady Saunderson, half to his relief, half to his disappointment, for the county has decreed that for some time at least her ladyship is to reside in Coventry.
Her escapade has followed that of her sister too quickly for even the most forward sycophant to overlook it; and so day after day the bride sits waiting in her beautiful drawing-room for the visitors that do not come, vowing vengeance silently, determined to give back slight for slight, snub for snub, while her husband, scowling, wanders through the still stately house to which he is for a few weeks confined with a sharp attack of rheumatism.
The officers of the Kelvick garrison give a large ball toward the middle of February, to which every one is invited. Everard dutifully puts in an appearance, though he is half dead with fatigue after a heavy day's hunting. He throws himself into an easy-chair in a cool corner behind a curtain, and is just dropping into a pleasant slumber, when one of his hosts, who has but lately joined the garrison, awakes him with a vehement nudge.
"I say, Everard, you know every one here; tell me who is that girl coming in at the door with the big yellow man? By Jove, she is a stunner! Who is she—eh, eh?"
Everard turns languidly, and then the blood rushes to his face, for within half a dozen yards of him stands Pauline, her dusky head erect, looking at him with eyes lustrous, calm, superbly indifferent—a look that seems to say, "Forgive me, if you like. Come to my side again. I do not want you; but I will not repel you. Come!"
He stands rooted to the spot as she passes him by, her dress brushing his knees. Her lovely face softens for a moment; she smiles half sadly, half contemptuously, as she whispers—
"Not a word, Jack? Well, perhaps you are right. Do not wear the willow, though; I am not worth it."
"Who is she—eh, Everard? Can't you speak?"
"Oh, she is a—a Lady Saunderson! I say, Archer, introduce me to that girl in pink over there, will you? Jolly-looking girl!"
His fatigue forgotten, unfelt, Everard is soon whirling quickly round the room, whispering nonsense into his partner's ear, but feeling everywhere, though he looks not directly at her again, the cold beautiful face of the woman he loves, watching him, reading the tempest of his mind.
"Very good—very good indeed, Jack; but take care not to overdo it. Take your pleasure a little more languidly; it will be much more effective," says Miss Wynyard, laying her hand encouragingly on her cousin's shoulder.
"Have you spoken to her, Florry?" he asks eagerly.
"No, I have only bowed and half smiled; but in a month or two," says Miss Wynyard frankly, "I guess our hands will meet in amity. You won't mind, will you, Jack? But you know the principle of my life has always been to make friends with the mammon of iniquity; and it is a principle that I have found to pay in the long run. How well she is looking, and how grandly she carries it off, doesn't she? I always knew there was a spice of the fiend in Pauline Lefroy. Do you know, Jack, I rather pity Sir Arthur, ill-conditioned animal that he is. He must have loved her to—"
"Loved her! Pshaw! He never meant to marry her from the beginning; he actually said so one day at the club to a fellow I know; and it was only when he found I was in possession that he appeared on the scene and took to dogging her again."
"Well, never mind, Jack; you have come out of the business capitally, with a dignity and a reserve that quite astonished me."
"Oh," says Everard candidly, "I wear well before the world! But I don't mind telling you, Flo, that I was pretty well bowled over at first, raved like the victim of a melodrama, wanted to pursue the guilty pair, brain the bridegroom,et cætera. Fortunately a friend of sterner stuff than I am, who had also been tried by the fire, steadied me in time, and made me acknowledge that there is not a woman living worth the sigh of an honest man; and so I dried up."
"Not a woman living?" repeats Miss Wynyard, with an earnestness very foreign to that young person's tone in a ball-room or elsewhere. "Stuff, Jack, stuff! Loose statements of that kind do not patent your good sense or your cure, let me tell you. You were born of a woman, were you not—a woman whom, as well as I can remember, you loved, reverenced, and mourned—"
"Shut up, Flo," he says roughly, his face flushing; "I won'tstand preaching from you! As if—as if I would compare my mother—"
"That's just the point, dear boy, I wish to lead you to. The memory of your mother ought to save you from falling into the deep cant, the twopenny cynicism of the jilted man who labels every woman worthless because he happens to be ill-used by an ambitious flirt. No, all women are not worthless; and there are many in the world too good for you, Jack—ay, too good for men ten times better than you. I know of one who once loved a man—Jack, are you listening? I am going to tell you a most interesting story."
He turns listlessly.
"Ay, Flo? A woman you once knew of, who loved a man. And what was her history?"