"Yes—the spell of the devil."
"When she discovered the truth, I found that I had secured her hate, rather than her love; at Ashford station she faced me like a tigress, and, full of the honest indignation that possessed her, held me up to the shame I deserved before a host of people—pointed me out as a coward and knave who had sought to cruelly deceive her. She claimed the protection of that—that terrible man in the shop there—he was at Ashford as you know—and I was glad to hide my head in the railway carriage, and be borne away from his withering contempt. That's the story. I will not tell you of the sorrow which I experienced for the harm that I had done her—of the shame that has remained with me since then—of the turn which she even gave to my character. Sidney, I would have made any reparation in my power—but I was baffled and degraded, and dared not look upon her any more."
"That man I met at your house—he knew the story?"
"He knew the beginning of it; and for Harriet Wesden's sake—and to redeem her character in the mind of a man who has not a high estimate of women—I told the end."
Sidney sat and thought for a while. Then he pronounced his verdict.
"All this assures me that you are easily led away—that it is only chance that has kept you from being wholly a bad man. You are weak, vacillating, and unprincipled—you are no Hinchford."
"I have tried to do my best all my life, but somehow failed," said Maurice, ruefully; "impulse has led me wrong when my heart has meant right—candidly, cousin, I have been a fool more than once. But you cannot believe that I would do harm to any human being in cold blood?"
"Possibly not. But what virtue is there in that?"
"Let me add, Sidney, that I honestly believe that I have been altering for the better for the last two years. I have seen the emptiness of all my friends' professions; their greed of gain and love of self; have turned heart-sick at their evil-speaking, lying, and slandering. I feel that I haven't a friend; that I have 'used up' all the pleasures in the world, and that there is nothing I care for in it."
"Yours is a bad state, that leads to worse, as a rule, Maurice."