‘Thank you, Markham,’ said Guy, after an effort; ‘I cannot tell you about it. I will only set you at rest by saying it is nothing you could think I ought to be ashamed of.’
‘Then why—what has come between? What could man or woman object to in you?’ said Markham, regarding him proudly.
‘These unhappy suspicions,’ said Guy.
I can’t make it out,’ said Markham. ‘You must have been doing something foolish to give rise to them.’
Guy told nearly what he had said on the first day of his return, but nothing could be done towards clearing up the mystery, and he returned to Oxford as usual.
March commenced, and Charles, though no longer absolutely recumbent, and able to write letters again, could not yet attempt to use his crutches, so that all his designs vanished, except that of persuading his father to go to London to meet Guy and Markham there, and transact the business consequent on his ward’s attaining his majority. He trusted much to Guy’s personal influence, and said to his father, ‘You know no one has seen him yet but Philip, and he would tell things to you that he might not to him.’
It was an argument that delighted Mr. Edmonstone.
‘Of course I have more weight and experience, and—and poor Guy is very fond of us. Eh, Charlie?’
So Charles wrote to make an appointment for Guy to meet his guardian and Markham in London on Easter Tuesday. ‘If you will clear up the gambling story,’ he wrote, ‘all may yet be well.’
Guy sighed as he laid aside the letter. ‘All in vain, kind Charlie,’ said he to himself, ‘vain as are my attempts to keep my poor uncle from sinking himself further! Is it fair, though,’ continued he, with vehemence, ‘that the happiness of at least one life should be sacrificed to hide one step in the ruin of a man who will not let himself be saved? Is it not a waste of self-devotion? Have I any right to sacrifice hers? Ought I not rather’—and a flash of joy came over him—‘to make my uncle give me back my promise of concealment? I can make it up to him. It cannot injure him, since only the Edmonstones will know it! But’—and he pressed his lips firmly together—‘is this the spirit I have been struggling for this whole winter? Did I not see that patient waiting and yielding is fit penance for my violence. It would be ungenerous. I will wait and bear, contented that Heaven knows my innocence at least in this. For her, when at my best I dreaded that my love might bring sorrow on her—how much more now, when I have seen my doom face to face, and when the first step towards her would be what I cannot openly and absolutely declare to be right? That would be the very means of bringing the suffering on her, and I should deserve it.’