"I am sure," said Dormer, "that in time you will come to hold the same view. And meanwhile I should just put away the idea of ordination. You were going to wait till Lent anyhow if necessary, and you can wait till June."
Tristram looked straight at him to see if he could read anything more in his expression.
"I don't know that I can trust you, so to speak," he said slowly. "I think you are too kind—to other people."
Dormer raised his eyebrows with a little smile. "Am I?"
"I know that I did what I could," went on Tristram in a sort of outburst, "and it hurt all the time like a knife. But now I feel swamped with a sense of failure, and I pray and go on praying, but there is no comfort anywhere. Sometimes I begin to wonder if, apart from my own feelings, I did right in helping on the marriage at all." And he laughed, because he was conscious of his own habit of introspection, and half ashamed to lay it bare.
At that Dormer sat up a little in his chair, and turned a very penetrating gaze upon him. "Now what do you mean exactly by that? I thought you felt quite sure from the beginning?"
"So I did," responded his friend, "and so I do, but—it's no use. I cannot really trust Armand. I know nothing against him, but I have a very shrewd suspicion that he only thinks of himself, and that he will always put his own interests before Horatia's. And for all Horatia's apparent independence she needs protection far more than many of her sex."
"Well?"
"You see I know Horatia," pursued Tristram, "and I realised that if she were once awakened, and then her hopes were frustrated, it might be a very serious thing for her; and there was always the chance that Armand might turn out better than I expected. Of course I put all that to the Rector, and, as you know, by degrees he came round."
"I quite understand. It would have been hard enough to resign her to a man whom you knew and trusted, especially as it practically devolved on you to plead your rival's cause, but it would have been easy compared with this."