A twinge of remorse had to be stilled by the recollection that everything was fair in love and war, and by heaven--no one could love Aura better than he did. No! no one!
Of course, he would have been a fool not to take the luck sent him, and he was a still greater fool to feel that there was in it any stealing of a march on Ned Blackborough.
What would Hirsch say? For, ever since he had given himself up soul and body to that great man, he had formed a habit of referring to him as his standard of conduct. The result here was that Ted positively blushed at his own scruples.
No, if--there was any unpleasantness--it would be better to end the compact, and let them each do their best on their own footing.
His was very different to what it had been five months ago. There was nothing now to prevent his being as rich as Ned Blackborough; or, in the future, having such a title as his. For at bottom, all things were a question of money. That he had learnt from Mr. Hirsch. A quick wave of eager ambition sent the young blood tingling to the finger-tips. He felt glad he might have to fight fair for the girl he loved. Besides, it would be so much fairer on her. She ought not to be deceived. This highly moral thought brought with it such a sense of conscious virtue as sent him back to his office thinking deliberately how Hirsch would admire Aura when he saw her--in pink satin and diamonds of course.
[CHAPTER XII]
Ned Blackborough had been to the Mountains of the Moon; at least so he told his cousin when he drove her out from the hospital to New Park the very day of his arrival at home.
"Call it the Mountains of the Moon, my dear," he had said, "it sounds definite and may mean so much--or so little."
This was about a week before Christmas. It gave promise of being a hard one, for a slight sprinkling, more of frost than snow, lay on the roads, and the horses' roughened hoofs echoed cheerfully through the keen air. It was exhilarating, Helen felt, after those long months at the hospital broken only by dull constitutionals. She had begun these by setting her face always to the country; but after a time the long rows of workmen's houses, the dreary muddiness of gravel side-walkings, the intolerable admixture of bricks and bakers' carts had driven her back to wander aimlessly through crowded streets. There she could at any rate see civilisation, pure and undefiled by attempts after the Garden of Eden!
So this was joy. The hedgerows were black with unutterable soot, the sky was grey with smoke, but the birds were twittering among the smutty hips and haws, and overhead a flight of cawing rooks made the grey seem light by their blackness.