(viii)
The following day was one of singular discomfort, and of private interviews that were held to be of the greatest necessity, in spite of the fact that the participants always emerged from them in worse plight than they went in.
The Canon saw Valeria in his study, and she came out crying.
Valeria sought Flora, and both wept.
Quentillian deliberately demanded an interview from Captain Cuscaden, but was baffled in his design of a rational discussion of the three-cornered situation by Cuscaden’s honest bewilderment at the mere suggestion of disinterested counsel.
It seemed, indeed, that Captain Cuscaden would have understood Owen better, and certainly have thought more highly of him, had the traditional horsewhip, abhorred of all Owen’s most deeply-rooted prejudices, held a place in their conversation, at least as threat, if not as actual fact.
Failing the horsewhip, Cuscaden was inclined to follow in the wake of the Canon and attribute to Valeria’s discarded fiancé a spirit of generous heroism that was even less to Quentillian’s liking.
“Captain Cuscaden takes primitive views,” Quentillian observed to Lucilla, whom alone he suspected of summing up the whole situation very much at its true value.
“Yes, that will suit Val very well.”
“You think she takes primitive views, too?”