The field was thus left free for Mabel and Edward. Mr. Rutland was seriously displeased. He had been thwarted in a wish that was very dear to him, and he was not the kind of man to forget the defeat. Although Edward Layton was allowed to come to the house, Mr. Rutland received him without favor, and it was only upon the imploring and repeated solicitations of his wife and daughter that he consented to an engagement between the young people. It was a half-hearted consent, and caused them some unhappiness. More than once he declared in their presence, and in the presence of his wife, that if anything ever occurred which would cast the slightest shadow of doubt or dishonor upon Edward Layton, no power on earth should induce him to allow the marriage to take place. It was not necessary for him to impress upon them that, above everything else in the world, he was jealous of his good name. They knew this well enough, and were in a certain sense proud in the knowledge, because the stainless reputation he bore reflected honor upon themselves. But they did not see the cloud that was hanging above them. It gathered surely and steadily, and brought with it terrible events, in the whirlpool of which the happiness of Mabel and Edward was fated to be ingulfed.
The cause lay not in themselves. It lay in Eustace Rutland. It was he who was responsible for all.
He was in London, in partial disgrace with his father. He was without a career; he had already contracted vicious and idle habits; he was frequently from home; and although his father questioned him severely, he would give no truthful account of his movements and proceedings. Some accounts he did give, but his father knew instinctively that they were false or evasive. As he could obtain no satisfaction from his son, Mr. Rutland, aware of the perfect confidence which existed between Eustace and Mabel, applied to her for information; but she would not utter one word to her brother's hurt. Her father could extract nothing from her, and there gradually grew within him an idea that there was a conspiracy against him in his own home, a conspiracy in which Edward Layton was the principal agent. It was natural, perhaps, that he should think more hardly of this stranger than of his own children.
Had he set a watch upon his son, he might have made discoveries which would have been of service to all, and which might have averted terrible consequences. But proud and self-willed as he was, it did not occur to him to do anything which in his view savored of meanness. His son Eustace went his way, therefore, to sure and certain ruin. When he was absent from home he corresponded regularly with his sister, and Mr. Rutland sometimes demanded to see this correspondence.
"You can make nothing of it, papa," said Mabel. "Eustace and I do not correspond like other people."
He insisted, nevertheless, upon seeing these letters, and Mabel showed them to him. As he could not understand them, he demanded that she should read them intelligibly to him; but it being a fact that there was always something in Eustace's correspondence which would deepen his father's anger against him, the young girl refused to read them. This, as may be supposed, did not tend to pacify Mr. Rutland. It intensified the bitterness of his heart towards those whom he believed were conspiring against him. He applied to Edward Layton.
"You are in my daughter's confidence," he said to the young man, "and as you have wrung from me a reluctant consent to an engagement with her, I must ask you to give me the information which she withholds from me."
He met with another rebuff. Edward Layton declared that he would it violate the confidence which Mabel had reposed in him. At one time Mr. Rutland said to Edward Layton,
"My son has been absent from home for several days. Have you seen him?"
"Yes, sir," replied Edward, "I have seen him."