"I can't speak of that side of it," he said brokenly. "I have loved her distractedly ... I still love her ... but there is her happiness to think of, and if she ... if the Comte de la Roche-Guyon..." He could get no further, but laid his head against the cold glass.
"My dear boy, forgive me," exclaimed Mr. Grenville remorsefully. "I am so upset I don't know what I am saying. I'm a selfish old man, and you put me to shame ... you put me to shame...."
Sighing heavily, he turned round his chair to the table. He felt himself suddenly what he had often mendaciously declared himself to be, an old man. Perhaps it was wrong to struggle against the young—to play Providence overmuch. Yet this was Horatia's whole life at stake. Still, the man who stood silent there at the window, in what bitter pain he could guess, was able to see her go. He put out his hand, and took up the brass of Allectus, lying neglected among a disarray of papers, and, in the silence studied the galley on the reverse. At last he said miserably:
"What do you know about this young man?"
Tristram told him about the family, while the Rector turned the coin over and over.
"Yes, that's all right, I suppose, but what about the young man himself?"
"Frankly, I don't know any more than you do."
"But you have your suspicions, eh? Young Frenchmen don't bear a very good character, and you know that."
"Nor do all young Englishmen."
Mr. Grenville refused to be drawn off. "When you were in Paris, or wherever it was, Tristram, staying with his family, surely you must have heard something about him."