"It is true, then!" said Mr. Sauls, a trifle hoarsely. "Would you mind telling me what you know about it, sir?"
"Yes, I should mind," said the old man. Then, when he looked at Mr. Sauls, he apparently relented. "Sit down; though the story won't take long. It's short, and not particularly sweet," he remarked; and he told it in as few words as possible.
"Put not your trust in women," said George, with rather a futile attempt at flippancy, when he had heard the end. "What a fool I've been! I thought I had bought all my experience in that line years ago. Oh well! it's done now, and the sweetest ingénue in the world won't take me in again."
Mr. Russelthorpe looked up sharply. "I suppose when a man's hurt he must blame some one," he said; "and it's easiest to throw the blame on the woman; and this, perhaps, is as good a reason for raving against her as any other. Otherwise, I should say that whoever has cause of complaint, you've none; but my eyes are old and blind. You talk of being 'taken in'. Possibly she encouraged you more than I knew."
George coloured. "I beg your pardon, sir," he said. "I did not mean to imply that Miss Deane—Mrs. Thorpe, I mean—ever did more than barely tolerate me at times. She was a cut above me, I fancied. As events have proved, I was a trifle too modest. It isn't generally my failing; but, evidently, her taste was not so fastidious as I supposed. Barnabas Thorpe knew better. D——n him!" he added savagely.
"Oh certainly!" said Mr. Russelthorpe. "We'll do that, with all my heart. Not that it will make any difference. But, as to her, you're wrong. If it's any consolation to you, I don't think that she would have married you in any case. Not that I don't believe she would have done a wise thing if she had," he added, holding out his hand with a gleam of sympathy. "I should have been glad to see it; but—and this is one of those little arrangements that make one wonder whether there isn't a devil at the steering wheel after all—the purer minded and more innocent a girl is, the more likely she is to fling herself away for an empty idea, and the more faith she'll have in any canting fool who appeals to her 'higher motives'. It is born with some women, that pining to sacrifice themselves, and to spend all their energies on other people. It used to amuse me, when my niece was a child, to see how she was always throwing pearls before swine. Well! well! she's done it with a vengeance this time!"
"Ah! I am glad it amuses you so much," said Mr. Sauls. "It's a very entertaining story from first to last, isn't it? I don't know which is funniest, the thought of that girl's lonely girlhood in this house, where no one seems to have cared twopence about her, or her reckless marriage with a man who'll probably make her repent every hour of her life. Do you suppose he'll kick her when he gets sick of the pearls? That would be most amusing of all, wouldn't it?"
He spoke almost brutally. Mr. Deane, however angry, could not have used that tone to an old man; but George had been brought up in a less strict school of manners, and, perhaps, at that moment had a revulsion of feeling against these grandees amongst whom he had pushed himself in,—to his own undoing, as he felt just then.
At that moment he found it hard to look at things calmly, or to consider that, after all, a love affair was an episode he would get over; whereas the advantages he had derived from an intimacy with the Deanes were solid and lasting, the entrée to Mr. Deane's house having been a decided step upwards on the social ladder. Mr. Russelthorpe made no reply, and George took up his hat.
"I am in too bad a temper to be good company, sir," he said; "though, I daresay, I amuse you. Good-bye."