“Thank you, dear; I knew you would do what you could. I was just talking to Hero about the poor boy. The one thing we have to try for now is to make this trouble a means of rescuing him from his present life.”
“I ought to make that condition, of course,” the elder brother observed doubtingly; “but from what you told me last night he would only refuse it if I were to.”
“It is very difficult,” the Duchess admitted. “I am afraid you are right. Perhaps if you say nothing about conditions, and simply let him know that you are helping him generously, he will feel ashamed not to make a return.”
The Duke of Trent had his own opinion as to his brother’s sense of shame, but he did not care to express it before Miss Vanbrugh.
“What I want most,” the Duchess proceeded, “is to induce him to come here again. I dread the consequence of his always being with that woman. If I could get hold of him sometimes, and bring him into contact with women of a different kind, I feel sure that the contrast between them and the woman he is living with would soon disgust him with her.”
Even if the Duchess had not stolen a glance at Hero Vanbrugh as she spoke, her drift could hardly have been misunderstood by the girl. The Duke failed to see the personal application of his mother’s remark.
“If you could find some decent woman who would overlook the past, and get him to marry her, she might be able to keep him straight,” he said bluntly. “On the other hand, she might not.”
“I feel sure that he might be saved by the right woman,” the Duchess said earnestly. “I am convinced that the poor boy is secretly sick of the life he has been leading, and only his pride keeps him from giving it up. A noble, pure-minded girl, who really cared for him, would be able to do anything she liked with Alistair.”
This time the allusion was too plain to be mistaken. The Home Secretary intercepted the blush on Hero’s face, and his eyes were opened. A look of dissatisfaction replaced his indifferent air, as he replied with some bitterness:
“I am not so sure of it. Many a good woman has sacrificed her life before now in the effort to reclaim a man who was unworthy of her, and the sacrifice has been in vain.”