He had not flinched when he came unexpectedly on Lady Newhaven. At the
sight of her a sudden passion of anger shot up and enveloped him as in
one flame from head to foot. His love for Rachel was a weapon, and he
used it. He did not greatly care about his own good name, but the good
name of the man whom Rachel loved was a thing to fight for. It was for
her sake, not Lady Newhaven's, that he had concocted the story of the
mistaken rooms. He should not have had the presence of mind if Rachel
had not been concerned.
He had not finished with Lady Newhaven. He should have trouble yet with
her, hideous scenes, in which the corpse of his dead lust would be
dragged up, a thing to shudder at, out of its nettly grave.
He could bear it. He must bear it. Nothing would induce him to marry
Lady Newhaven, as she evidently expected. He set his teeth. "She will
know the day after to-morrow," he said to himself, "when she sees my
engagement to Rachel in the papers. Then she will get at me somehow, and
make my life a hell to me, while she can. And she will try and come
between me and Rachel. I deserve it. I deserve anything I get. But
Rachel knows, and will stick to me. I will go down to her to-morrow. I
can't go on without seeing her. And she won't mind, as the engagement
will be given out next day."
He became more composed at the thought of Rachel. But presently his lip
quivered. It would be all right in the end. But, oh! not to have done
it! Not to have done it! To have come to his marriage with a whiter
past, not to need her forgiveness on the very threshold of their life
together, not to have been unfaithful to her before he knew her.
What man who has disbelieved in his youth in the sanctity of Love, and
then later has knelt in its Holy of Holies, has escaped that pang?
CHAPTER XLVI
There's neither honesty, manhood, nor good-fellowship in
thee.--SHAKESPEARE
"My mind misgives me, Dick!" said the Bishop, a day or two later, as
Dick joined him and his sister and Rachel at luncheon at the Palace. "I
am convinced that you have been up to some mischief."
"I have just returned from Warpington, my lord. I understood it was your
wish I should ride over and tell them Hester was better."
"It certainly was my wish. I'm very much obliged to you. But I
remembered after you had gone that you had refused to speak to Gresley
when he was over here, and I was sorry I sent you."
"I spoke to him all right," said Dick, grimly. "That was why I was so
alacritous to go."
The Bishop looked steadily at him.
"Until you are my suffragan I should prefer to manage my own business
with my clergy."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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