"Selfish!" cried the Knight. "Selfish! Is it selfish to hold honour dear? Is it selfish to be ashamed to deceive the woman one loves? Have I, who have so striven in all things to put her welfare first, been selfish towards my wife in this hour of crisis?"
He sat down, heavily; leaned his elbows on his knees, and dropped his head into his hands.
This attitude of utter dejection filled the Bishop with thankfulness. Was he, in the very moment when he had given up all hope of winning, about to prove the victor?
"Perilously selfish, my dear Hugh," he said. "But, thank Heaven, no harm has yet been done. Listen to me and I will shew you how you may keep your honour safely untarnished, yet withhold from Mora all knowledge which might cause her disquietude of mind, thus securing her happiness and your own."
CHAPTER LI
TWO NOBLE HEARTS GO DIFFERENT WAYS
On that same afternoon, an hour before sunset, the two men who loved
Mora faced one another, for a final farewell.
The Bishop had said all he had to say. Without interruption, his words had flowed steadily on; eloquent, logical, conciliatory, persuasive.
At first he had talked to the top of the Knight's head, to the clenched hands, to the arms outstretched across the table.
He had wondered what thoughts were at work beneath the crisp thickness of that dark hair. He had wished the rigid attitude of tense despair might somewhat relax. He had used the most telling inflexions of his persuasive voice in order to bring this about, but without success. He had wished the Knight would break silence, even to rage or to disagree. To that end he had cast as a bait an intentional slip in a statement of facts; and, later on, a palpable false deduction in a weighty argument. But the Knight had not risen to either.