All Over.
Matters did not end at once. Interview after interview filled up the rest of that miserable day. Lord Haredale came down from London, apparently already determined to break off the engagement. Mrs Leigh’s determination went steadily in the same direction. She scouted Una’s letter as a manifest falsehood, of a piece with the story of the purse, and declared that nothing would induce her to accept Lady Haredale’s daughter as her son’s wife. As Lucian would not own himself convinced, she proposed a private appeal to Major Fowler, but this he fiercely negatived, saying that the facts were valueless, except as coming from Amethyst herself, and also that Major Fowler could do nothing but echo the denial.
Lord and Lady Haredale declared that unless Lucian, and Mrs Leigh also, withdrew their suspicions at once and wholly, and apologised for having entertained them, they would not allow their daughter to continue her engagement. Amethyst herself, angered and hurt, ashamed and confounded, too inexperienced to follow the dictates of the love that ought to have been stronger than all else, wounded at Lucian’s doubts, and believing that the duty of hiding her mother’s disgrace came before the duty of being open with her lover, was passive and silent. Lucian, with intervals of passionate desire to give up everything rather than lose her, recurred again and again to his instinctive utterance, “She ought to tell me” well knowing that it was out of his power to endure the doubt that had fallen on her. So he fought back the impulse to trust her, as a temptation, and she fought back the longing to tell him, as a sin; and so, forced on by the determination of their elders, the fatal deed was completed. The packets of letters and presents were exchanged, the notes and telegrams to stop the wedding preparations were already being despatched, Amethyst had locked herself into her own room, feeling as if she could never show her face again, and Lucian, in his, was roughly throwing his things into a portmanteau, determining that months should elapse before he again saw Ashfield, if indeed he ever returned there at all, when Mr Riddell, unluckily absent from home all day on clerical business, drove himself back in the cool of the evening in his little pony-trap, his mind recurring to his son’s distress of mind on the night before. Presently he saw Sylvester coming along the road to meet him.
“Oh, father,” said the young man, as the pony pulled up, “this has been a miserable day.”
“What is it? Get in, and tell me about it,” said the Rector.
Sylvester nerved himself to tell the story clearly.
“We did see her. I cannot think otherwise,” he concluded. “But I would stake my soul on it, that there is some way out of the mystery.”
“My dear boy, it doesn’t do to begin married life with a mystery. Wait, and it may be solved yet.”
“Her life will be ruined!”
“No, I hope not; we must try to show her kindness, to help her. But, if all had gone smooth, and she had married Lucian, who can tell how it would have been? He is a good fellow; but she—”