He did not deny it, but again he strove to disengage himself. But she would have none of it.
"Bertie, dearest," she spoke cheerfully, though her eyes were still swimming with tears, "you mustn't think that you're going to get rid of us in this way. You've just got to come in to breakfast with me, and afterwards we'll tell Grannie all about it. Come along, sir, I insist."
He braced himself up for resistance, but he had still to learn that against a woman's love a man's will can prevail nothing. At first he was firm, then wavering, and finally he was led in triumph across the smooth lawn and along the winding path to the French windows of the morning-room. But when he found himself face to face with the kind old lady who had loved him as her own son, and saw the tears trickle down her withered, apple-red cheeks as she listened to the tale which Marian poured out, he felt that he had passed the limits of self-endurance. For more than twenty-four hours he had neither eaten nor drunk, and he was sick at heart. Gradually Marian felt the arm, which she had drawn tightly through hers, grow heavier and heavier until at last as she finished her tale with a little tremulous burst of indignation, he sank back in the arm-chair, and slowly fainted. But through the mist which closed in upon him he saw nothing but kindly pitying faces bending over his, and heard Grannie's gentle whisper—
"I believe you, Herbert," and more emphatic but none the less earnest were her words, whose sweet, tear-stained face, so close to his, was the last he saw when unconsciousness was closing in upon him.
"So do I, Bertie, I hate Rupert," and sweeter than the most heart-stirring music were the faltering words she added—
"And I love you better than ever. Oh, Grannie, Grannie, he has fainted!"
CHAPTER I
MY APOLOGY
Fortune is the strangest mistress a man ever wooed. Who courts her she shuns, who deserves her she passes over, and on him who defies her and takes no pains to secure her she lavishes her favours. I am one of those to whom she has shown herself most kind. Many years ago I vowed my life away to one purpose, and that partly an immoral one. It was a purpose which held my life. I swore to seek no end apart from it, and I put away from my thoughts all joys that were not included in its accomplishment. And yet, having kept my oath, I still possess in the prime of life everything which a man could wish for. I am rich, and well thought of amongst my fellows. I am married to the woman whom I love, and life is flowing on with me as calmly and peacefully as the murmuring waters of a woodland stream in the middle of summer. And, above all, my heart is at ease, for I have kept my vow.
She is a strange mistress, indeed! Nothing have I sought or deserved of her, yet everything I have. Whilst he who was far above me in his deservings, and whose sufferings none save myself thoroughly understood, passed through a gloomy life, buffeted by every wind, stranded by every tide of fortune; misunderstood, wronged, falsely accused, and narrowly escaped remaining in men's minds only as a prototype of a passionate, unforgiving, Quixotic man.