And now O'Flaherty learned that all the time he had been thinking these
things, Mrs. Rebell was well aware that there could be nothing permanent
or avowable in her tie with Berwick; while Berwick, on his side, was
playing the most delightful and absorbing of the great human games with
dice so loaded that, come what might, he was bound to win. The barrister
told himself that he had indeed been simple-minded to suppose that such
a man as Arabella's brother would sacrifice to love the wealth which
gave him an absolute and preeminent position among those he wished to
lead. "A marriage of true minds?"--an ugly look came over the plain,
strong face of the man sitting by Mrs. Rebell, and she, catching that
look, wondered what hateful thought, or sudden physical discomfort, had
brought it there.
But, when once he found himself kneeling in the humble little iron
chapel, long habit acted on Daniel O'Flaherty's mind, cleared it of
sordid images, made him think more charitable thoughts of the woman who
crouched rather than knelt by his side, in what seemed a position of
almost painful abasement. Poor Barbara Rebell! Mingling with the prayers
he knew by heart, and which were, after all, one long supplication for
mercy and forgiveness, came the slow conviction that she might not be
deserving of so much condemnation as he had at first assumed. Perhaps
she had come here, with him, to-day, to be out of the way of temptation,
and not, as he had unkindly suspected, to satisfy an idle and not very
healthy curiosity.
Busy as he had been last night in the music gallery with thoughts of his
own self and Arabella, O'Flaherty had yet been aware that an eager
colloquy was going on by the organ. He had heard Berwick's voice become
urgent and imperious, and he had put down the other man's rather
dramatic disappearance, and Mrs. Rebell's extreme quietude during the
rest of the evening, to some lovers' quarrel between these two, who up
to that time had required no such artificial stimulus to their passion.
Perhaps what had taken place between them had been more tragic, for Mrs.
Rebell looked to-day very unlike her gentle, composed self.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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