“Indeed, Alick, if you would listen, you would find him very much to be pitied.”
“I only wish never to hear of any of them again.” He did not speak like himself, and Rachel was aghast.
“I thought you would not object to my letting her in,” she began.
“I never said I did,” he answered; “I can never think of him but as having caused her death, and it was no thanks to him that there was nothing worse.”
The sternness of his manner would have silenced Rachel but for her strong sense of truth and justice, which made her persevere in saying, “There may have been more excuse than you believe.”
“Do you suppose that is any satisfaction to me?” He walked decidedly away, and entered by the library window, and she stood grieved and wondering whether she had been wrong in pitying, or whether he were too harsh in his indignation. It was a sign that her tone and spirit had recovered, that she did not succumb in judgment, though she felt utterly puzzled and miserable till she recollected how unwell, weary, and unhappy he was, and that every fresh perception of his sister’s errors was like a poisoned arrow to him; and then she felt shocked at having obtruded the subject on him at all, and when she found him leaning back in his chair, spent and worn out, she waited on him in the quietest, gentlest way she could accomplish, and tried to show that she had put the subject entirely aside. However, when they were next alone together, he turned his face away and muttered, “What did that woman say to you?”
“Oh, Alick, I am sorry I began! It only gives you pain.”
“Go on—”
She did go on till she had told all, and he uttered no word of comment. She longed to ask whether he disapproved of her having permitted the interview; but as he did not again recur to the topic, it was making a real and legitimate use of strength of mind to abstain from tearing him on the matter. Yet when she recollected what worldly honour would once have exacted of a military man, and the conflicts between religion and public opinion, she felt thankful indeed that half a century lay between her and that terrible code, and even as it was, perceiving the strong hold that just resentment had taken on her husband’s silently determined nature, she could not think of the neighbourhood of the Carleton family without dread.