Bride said nothing. She looked away from Eustace over the sea, and he saw that a shadow had fallen on her face.
“What is it, Bride?” he questioned quickly, feeling the sense of her beauty and purity again stealing over him like a charm. He had fancied after all these months that he could meet her without emotion, but already he felt the old fascination creeping over him.
“I am sorry,” answered Bride gently, “I am sorry—that is all.”
“Sorry about what?” he asked quickly.
“Sorry that you feel like that—that you can stoop to such a thing.”
He started as though something had stung him.
“I do not understand you,” he said, with a certain hauteur in his tone and a look of pain in his eyes.
She raised hers to his and looked him full in the face.
“It is not difficult to understand. You look on these pocket boroughs as a flagrant abuse, and yet you are willing to profit by that abuse. It is just the old story over again. You are willing to do evil that good may come, Eustace. I do not think that good ever does come when men have stooped to employ unworthy means. Take care you do not ruin your own cause by making that mistake all through.”
Yes, it was the same girl he had left—the same Bride—the mystic, the impracticable woman of dreams and theories. Beautiful ideals are so plausible till you come to try and apply them to the sordid realities of life—and then how untenable they become! But how was she to know that, living in this old-world spot and in a dreamland of her own? So he stifled his irritation and answered very patiently—