“That’s not surprising in the circumstances,” he returned with bitterness. “I don’t suppose that she trusts him out of her sight for long.”
“That wasn’t it,” Rose said quietly; and added after a brief pause: “She just wanted him.”
It was better, she decided, that he should face matters and give over cherishing a hopeless attachment. She liked George Sinclair sufficiently to wish to see him happily married and settled down. He was a man who would make an admirable husband.
But Sinclair showed no inclination towards marriage. He had met the girl he wanted, and lost her; no other girl could blot out the memory of his first real love, nor take her place in his heart. It had been a big blow when she married; and the bitterness of his disappointment increased enormously with the knowledge of the disaster which threatened her happiness. In a measure he had expected it; it did not come as a surprise, only as an ugly confirmation of his fears. He believed that he could have borne his own disappointment philosophically had life gone well for her: but the conviction that she had made a mistake held with him and inflamed his resentment against Hallam.
“Well, there’s one thing,” he said, as he got up from his seat and confronted Rose with grim set face, “if he goes on at the rate he did when he was at the Zuurberg she will be a widow before many years. A man can’t fool with his constitution like that—not in this country anyhow.”
“Don’t count on that, George,” she advised. “It’s a slow poison.”
He laughed shortly.
“I’ve a feeling that my turn will come,” he said, and turned about abruptly and left the room, left the house, with a sore heart, and his sense of exasperation deepening as he thought of the girl he loved tied to a drunkard who was not man enough to conquer his particular vice.
And the girl he pitied was blaming herself for not having gone with her man into the wilds, for not having allowed him to follow the life he preferred, hunting and exploring along the unbeaten track. Had life offered him a sufficient interest this relapse might have been averted. She had relied overmuch on the strength of character which she believed was his: she had overestimated his strength, had left him to fight his battle unaided. He had wearied of the struggle and given in. From the point where he wearied she took it up, took it up with a tireless determination to win, that armed itself against all disappointments and rebuffs; and the rebuffs were many. Hallam resented her attempts at coercion.
Oddly, he did not mind her knowing of his weakness, but he objected when she allowed her knowledge to become obvious. He felt that she ought to have ignored this thing; to embarrass him by thrusting it under his notice was tactless and annoying.