Then Ventin began to speak in slow, measured tones, quite different from his former vehement style.
"I was never a good young man," he said cynically; "but I don't think I was worse than the generality of fellows. Give a boy money and place him amid the temptations of London, and, in nine cases out of ten, he'll go to the devil, or, if he doesn't go, it is because some lucky accident prevents him. Perhaps he has a man-of-the-world friend who advises him--or he loses his money, and has to leave the primrose path--or, he may marry a good woman, and her influence may save him from his worst enemy, himself. Ah! if we only knew the value of a good woman's love--how she can be our guardian angel, and keep us pure and honourable in the midst of temptation! But we never find out the value of such treasures till it's too late,--but there,"--with a weary sigh,--"I am sentimentalizing again! Let me go on with my story.
"I lost both parents at the age of twenty, and I went to London with plenty of money and no experience whatever. Unluckily, I had no one to play the part of Mentor to my Telemachus, so I had to gain wisdom by experience, and pretty dearly I paid for it. I became a hard, cynical man of the world, for a thirteen years' residence in London was a liberal education to me in the nil admirari philosophy of to-day, and then--well my money lasted longer than my health, and I became seriously ill--so bad indeed that my doctors ordered me to Malta to be cured. Oh, heavens how ironical is Fate--it was merely a case of out of the frying-pan into the fire--for my part I prefer the frying-pan. It was true the balmy air and bright skies of Malta cured me of one disease, but unfortunately I contracted another not so easily dealt with,--that of love.
"I became acquainted with two charmingly pretty girls of the ages of twenty-three and nineteen, and--forgive my apparent egotism--both fell in love with me. It was the choice of Hercules over again, but unluckily I chose the wrong lady, and married the elder. 'Hell has no fury like a woman scorned,' so the younger soon hated me like poison, and left Malta for England. I married the woman of my choice and then my punishment commenced. She was a perfect devil, with nothing but her beauty to recommend her. Her father boasted they had Arab blood in their veins, and my belief is that the ancestor of the family must have been Eblis himself. Often and often she threatened to kill me for some petty thing, and I believe she would had not some instinct of danger restrained her. If I looked at another woman, there was a storm of reproaches--if I were away for a day, her jealous mind conjured up a hundred infidelities--in short, our married life was a hell upon earth. At last, after a year of this cat-and-dog existence, I determined to leave her, and to this course she assented, after a good deal of persuasion. A deed of separation was drawn up, by which I allowed her a handsome income on condition that she resided in Valletta. She agreed to this and, after a stormy parting, I went to England, and lived there a moody, discontented man."
"You did not see the other sister?" asked Ronald.
"No," he replied; "I never set eyes on her again. She was a nice girl, and I dare say I did treat her badly by leading her to believe I cared for her.
"Well, I wandered all over the United Kingdom and, while staying with some friends in the Highlands, I met the woman who made a better man of me--for a time. She was an orphan was Elsie Macgregor. Her father had been a soldier who died of consumption contracted in the trenches of Sebastopol, during the Crimean War. Fair and slender, with quiet, blue eyes and hair like yellow corn--I loved her devotedly--yes, too well to wrong her innocence, and would have gone away in silence, but she, with a woman's keen instinct, saw there was something wrong, and begged me to tell her all. I did so, and she--oh, Monteith, what do you think she did?--left her home and her friends--defied the sneers of the world and the scornful looks of her own sex and became my mistress. Yes--she saw that hers alone was the hand that could arrest me in my downward course; so to save me she ruined herself. I lived with her for one happy year, and always looked back to that time as the brightest era in my life.
"Then my devil of a wife found me out and instituted proceedings in the Divorce Court against me. I did not object, as I thought I would then be free to marry Elsie. The decree was pronounced, and as soon as I was able I married Elsie and took my passage with her to Australia--there intending to start a new life in a new land. We built castles in the air of a happy future, but it was not to be; for, just as the ship was leaving, that Maltese devil came on board, and then a fearful scene took place. I cannot describe to you the terrible way she went on, and Elsie, being in delicate health, clung to my arm nearly fainting. At last the climax came, for my former wife sprang forward and struck Elsie on the face--the poor girl fell in a faint on the deck, and after considerable difficulty that Maltese fiend was removed by force from the ship. We sailed, and I thought Elsie would soon recover, but the iron had entered into her soul, and before we rounded the Cape she was buried at sea."
Here Ventin covered his face with his hands, and Ronald, respecting his emotion, said nothing.
After a few moments of silence, Ventin resumed in an unsteady voice: