“My dear sir, we really cannot allow such a thing,” cried the rector, aghast. “You will surely reconsider this. At any rate, put off your flight for a few hours. It is a long way to Battisford, and we are just home now. You shall be driven over later if you wish it. Now do oblige me—”
All who witnessed it thought they had never seen such a curious look before, as that which came into the other’s face. A sharp struggle was going on within him.
“Go back with them—tell them who you are,” said the lonely heart of the exile. “You will have friends—a way will be found out of your difficulties somehow, and then what love and peace and happiness will be yours!”
“You—a beggar, penniless, ruined, destitute?” whispered Pride. “You, whose memory is under a cloud, and who are without the barest means of existence—will you go back to accept the charity of those with whom you moved as equal? Only reveal your identity and see how their grateful overtures will cool!”
Said Conscience, “Leave her—assassin. Can red blood-guiltiness and pure white innocence ever mate? Leave her, ere she comes to abhor your name.” And Pride and Conscience triumphed over Heart. “I greatly fear I must excuse myself for being unable to accept your kind hospitality,” he said at last. “But if you will do me one favour, I shall feel thankful to you.”
“Certainly. What is it?” said the rector. “If you will drop me a line to this address once or twice, and let me know how the young lady gets on, it would be a satisfaction to me. I cannot but feel greatly interested in my companion in adversity,” replied the stranger, rapidly scribbling on a card, which he handed to Dr Ingelow.
“Why, most certainly,” said the rector, hardly glancing at it. “Most certainly. But—”
He stopped short, gazing blankly into the darkness. The stranger had disappeared.
Roland Dorrien returned to Battisford in the grey winter’s morning, and having put together his few possessions at “The Silver Fleece,” he left that ancient hostelry for the railway station, to the unfeigned regret of the garrulous waiter, whom even a liberal honorarium could hardly console for the loss of so congenial a recipient of local gossip. Yet, up to the last moment, he found himself inconsistently cherishing a wild hope that, his identity being cleared up, the rector might come over in post haste to insist upon his return to Wandsborough. But no such summons came, and when he took his seat in a hard, cushionless third-class carriage, down whose rattling windows the pelting rain streamed in torrents, his case was about as hopeless and desperate as the lot of mortal man could well be.