"There's no doubt, I fear, that she's gone with Heath," he said, with a constraint into which he had schooled himself on the staircase. "As he appears to have stopped at Washington, I shall take the next train there, which leaves at nine-twenty-five. If they are married——"
He broke off, struck by the pallor that overspread her face.
"But they are married! They must be married!" she cried in terror.
For an instant he stared back at her white face in a horror as great as hers. Was it the first time in his life, he questioned afterwards, that he had been brought face to face with the hideous skeletons upon which living conventions assume a semblance of truth?
"I hope to heaven that he has not married her!" he exclaimed in a passion from which she shrank back trembling. "Good God! do you want me to haggle with a cad like that to make him marry my child?"
"And if he doesn't? what then?" moaned Lydia, in a voice that seemed to fade away while she spoke.
"If he doesn't I shall be almost tempted to bless his name. Haven't you proved to me that he is a cheat and a brute and a libertine, and yet you dare to tell me that I must force him to marry Alice. Oh, if he will only have the mercy to leave her free, I may still save her!" he said.
She looked at him with dilated eyes as if rooted in fear to the spot upon which she stood. "But the consequences," she urged weakly at last in a burst of tears.
"Oh, I'll take the consequences," he retorted harshly, as he went out.
An hour later, when he was settled in the rushing train, it seemed to him that he was able to find comfort in the words with which he had separated from his wife. Let Alice do what she would, there was always hope for her in the thought that he might help her to bear, even if he could not remove from her, the consequences of her actions. Could so great a force as his love for her fail to avert from her young head at least a portion of her inevitable disillusionment? The recollection of her beauty, of her generosity, and of the wreck of her womanhood almost before it had begun, not only added to his suffering, but seemed in some inexplicable way to increase his love. The affection he had always felt for her was strengthened now by that touch of pity which lends a deeper tenderness to all human relations.