“Brains are an asset in every country,” he answered; “but credit at one’s bank is the surest passport to success anywhere. So far as I remember, Steele was unfortunate. He did not leave us under any cloud; but there was a default in his department, and he had to make good. I imagine he emigrated with only the necessary means for landing.”
“Oh!” said Prudence, and regarded Mr Morgan, who was reputed to be a millionaire, with a diminution of respect. He could better have afforded to lose the money. To have allowed a man who, while responsible, was not culpable in the matter of the deficit to make good was ungenerous. “I wish you had not told me that.”
He looked astonished.
“You could have borne the loss,” she said.
“Business cannot be run on quixotic lines,” he answered. “Besides, every man of honour accepts his responsibilities.”
He was quite right; she knew that; all he said was perfectly just. But a woman seldom reasons on lines of strict justice. She would have liked Edward Morgan better had he been generous rather than just. Instead she went to bed feeling angry with him and compassionate towards Steele. Why, she wondered, had she forbidden Steele to write? And why had he obeyed her so implicitly? He might in any case have sent her a line of farewell before sailing. She would not have cared had the whole family seen it if only she had received that small assurance that he remembered.
Perhaps he did not remember. Perhaps when he left Wortheton he had put her out of his thoughts. There was no reason why he should continue to bear her in mind when circumstances had taken him out of her life and separated them so widely. There were fresh interests now, new scenes, to engage and distract his attention. The Wortheton episode had played an unimportant part in his life. Such episodes, she knew, were frequent in most men’s lives, and stood for no more than they were, pleasant interludes breaking the monotony of everyday things.
Then her thoughts strayed reminiscently to that stolen interview under her window; and she recalled things Steele had said to her and the manner of their utterance; and it seemed to her by the light of those half-forgotten memories that he had acted disloyally in going out of her life so completely. He had betrayed an interest in her. And he had stirred up a corresponding interest in her breast. He had no right to do that and then to pass on and forget.
Two days later Edward Morgan returned to Derbyshire. It had been his intention to propose to Prudence before returning. He had had an interview with Mr Graynor, and had ascertained that his suit was viewed favourably by her father; but Prudence herself was a little difficult during those last two days; and Mr Morgan did not feel sufficiently confident of success with her to put his happiness to the test. Her variable moods disconcerted him. It did not occur to him to seek an explanation of her decreased kindliness in anything that had passed between them; and so he failed to trace his fall in her esteem to the information he had given her in regard to Steele. That unfortunate relation had opened up a wider gulf than he would have believed possible, as a more generous account would, while raising him in her esteem, have decreased the influence of the absent Steele. Now the balance weighed in Steele’s favour; and Mr Morgan was made uncomfortably conscious of a lack of response to his tenderness from the girl he hoped to marry.
On the evening before he left he had an interview with her alone.