"Hang it, Willie! I don't like bolting. Besides, it's not half bad out here. Do you think I've—I've behaved like a beast, Willie?"
"It looks like it."
"It's no more than what lots of fellows do."
"Not a bit: less than a great many, thank God, Dick. Come, old chap, do the square thing—the squarest thing you can do now."
"Give me till to-morrow," said Dick, and escaped in a jumble of conflicting feelings—smothered pride in his fascinations, honest reprobation of his recklessness, momentary romantic impulses, recurrent prudential recollections, longings to stay, impatience to get rid of the affair, regrets that he had ever met Daisy Medland, pangs at the notion of not meeting her in the future—a very hotch-pot of crossed and jarring inclinations.
So the Governor did the right, the prudent thing, the only thing, the thing which he could not doubt was wise, and which all reasonable men must have seen to be inevitable. Nevertheless when he met Daisy Medland that afternoon in the Park, he felt much more like a pick-pocket than it is comfortable to feel when one is her Majesty's representative: for Dick was with him, and Daisy's eyes, which had lightened in joy at seeing them, clouded with disappointment as they rode past without stopping. Thus, when Dick turned very red and muttered, "I am a beast," the Governor moaned inwardly, "So am I."
It is perhaps creditable to Man—and Man, as opposed to Woman, in these days needs a word slipped in for him when it is reasonably possible—that these touches of tenderness fought against the stern resolve that had been taken. But of course they were only proper fruits of penitence, in Dick for himself, in Lord Eynesford for his kind, and it could not be expected that they would reproduce themselves in persons so entirely innocent of actual or vicarious offence as Lady Eynesford and Eleanor Scaife.
"I think," said Lady Eynesford, "that we may congratulate ourselves on a very happy way of getting out of the results of Dick's folly."
"I can't think that Dick said anything really serious," remarked Eleanor.