He thought over this. His slow-moving mind was made preternaturally acute by long dwelling on the one interminable subject. "Should I have told him anything?" he asked, "if I hadn't wanted to get the debt off my shoulders? No, I think not. Humphrey would not have consented for one thing, and I had given him my word. I suppose I was wrong there too. I ought never to have given him my word. Yet he would not have told me if I had not."
"That is Humphrey's blame. He asked you to keep dishonourable silence. You trusted him there. You would not have promised that."
"Then my silence was dishonourable?"
"You told Lord Sedbergh. I think you would have told him in any case. I think that you would have seen that you must. You would have insisted with Humphrey; and you must have had your way. You have acted so honourably where you did see clearly, that I have no doubt you would have seen clearly here. You had no time to think. You were under the influence of the sudden shock. You went up to London to see Lord Sedbergh the very next morning."
"It was pride," he said slowly. "The wrong pride. I have been very blind to my faults, Nina. Pride of place, pride of wealth, pride of birth! What are they in a crisis like this? I was humiliated to the dust before that man this morning. Oh, I have seen myself in a wrong light all my life. God has sent me this trial to show me how little worth I was in His sight. My pride led me wrong. Why was I thinking then about the money at all? Sedbergh was right. That woman was right, there. It was a base thought, and I have been very heavily punished for it."
She lay by his side, comforting him. She thought that he would now cease his self-examination, since it had led him to a conclusion damaging to himself, but healing too, if he saw a fault and repented of it. But presently he returned to it again.
"Why did I feel beaten and ashamed before Cheviot? Why has he the right to say those damning words to his nephew, 'I shall tell him that I brought you a definite charge made against your honour, and you did not deny it'?"
"Edward dear, you might have denied it, but for one thing. The charge against you was not true."
"But it was true. I knew of Susan's guilt, and money was paid to keep it secret—money that I knew had been paid."
"That you allowed to be paid," she corrected him. "You did not allow it. It was not paid to keep the secret. Virginia paid it, on behalf of Dick, and paid it with quite a different intention."