Chapter Thirty Two.
“That Sting Each Other Here in the Dust.”
Father and son had the house to themselves, for the servants had long since gone to bed, and Lady Orlebar had done likewise, in a towering passion. Softly Philip returned to the library, where he had left his father, and then for a few moments they stood silently gazing into each other’s faces, the expression of each equally wretched, equally blank, equally hopeless.
“He has told you—that infernal villain!” said Philip, at length. “I can see it.” Sir Francis nodded. He could not speak just then. “And this,” went on Philip, drawing forth Fordham’s communication. “You know what he says here? Oh, father, for God’s sake, is it true?”
“It is impossible to say for certain,” gasped the baronet, in a strange, jerky tone, after several futile attempts to speak. “It is impossible to—prove anything—either way.”
He did not upbraid his son, as many a father might and would have done. He did not say, “If you will go and throw your life away upon your own weak and foolish judgment, if you will go and do things in such hurried and hole-and-corner fashion, if you will go and buy a pig in a poke, you have got no more than you deserve—you have only yourself to thank?” But he did think—and that bitterly—that but for the hurry and secrecy on the part of Philip in the matter, the weight of this horror would never have fallen upon them at all.
“Father, what do you think—candidly? Do you think that scoundrel Fordham spoke the truth?”
It was the bitterest moment in Sir Francis’s life. To answer in the negative would be but to perpetuate the horror; besides he could not so answer. His glance avoided that of his son, and his head drooped forward on his chest, as he faltered, like a man who talks in his sleep—
“I believe he did. I cannot say otherwise—I believe he did.”
And then Philip knew that his life was ruined at the outset—wrecked almost before leaving port.