It had amounted to that of late, as he weighed and examined the question, viewing it from this side, from that side, ever striving to excuse his own action, to prove how out of the range of practical possibilities any other course had lain. And he did prove it, times without number, to his own satisfaction. He would feel settled and almost happy, for an hour or two. Then he would revert to the endless topic, the perpetual facing of what he had done, the terrible reality of those long years of deceit; and he would see again, vividly, the hopelessness that aught except confession could put matters right, together with the desperate blank impossibility of confessing.
"I THANK YOU ALL FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART."
So the circle of misery went on; and all the while he was the courteous host, the pleasant friend, the affectionate uncle, the busy Squire. But the pressure was wearing him out. He lay down at night with his burden; he rose in the morning with it. Gradually it was becoming an obsession.
Now this fresh stroke had fallen. Now, it might be, the choice was no longer his. Instead of being allowed to put things straight himself— as he had always purposed to do some day—it seemed that the wrong-doing was about to find him out, that the truth might become known without choice on his part.
"It was for your sake, my Mary!" he murmured, gazing at the lovely marble figure. "For your sake—my darling!"
The thought came—was it not conceivable that, even if he had lost her by right action, life without her, and without also this clogging weight on heart and conscience, might have been not only better, fairer, but actually happier?
And—he might not have lost her. At the time it seemed as if he must; but since then he had learned how she loved him from the first. What if she would have clung to him through all? What if the whole miserable tissue of guile and duplicity had been, not only wrong, but needless?