Jack, too, was at work down at the Courts,—not that he was likely to offer his escort in these days of his unhappy bondage to Mrs. Fox; but Honor's thoughts strayed persistently to him with anxious concern. He had returned from Calcutta after Christmas looking jaded and depressed. Tommy had been unable to make anything of him till, one day, his attention was caught by a paragraph in the Statesman concerning an application for a dissolution of marriage from her husband, on the usual grounds, by Mrs. Barrington Fox.
"Good God! a walkover for her!" he exclaimed in consternation. Being full of concern for Jack, he forthwith proceeded with the news to Miss Bright, and they lamented together in bitterness over the young man's impending ruin. "She has played her cards like a sharper, and I have no doubt that that old idiot, Jack, is done for," Tommy observed.
"But why should he marry her?" Honor protested. "Two wrongs don't make a right."
"He feels, I suppose, in honour bound to marry her."
"In honour bound to punish himself by rewarding her dishonesty?"
"He shared it."
"Hers was the greater sin. She tempted him. Think of her age and his, her experience of life and his!—I don't see it!"
"Men have a special code of honour, it seems."
"Tommy, it is a case of kidnapping. Jack's only a foolish, weak boy, deserving of punishment, but it isn't fair that the punishment should be life-long!"
"He is pretty sick of himself, I can vouch for that."