“No, not that,” interrupted the younger, abruptly. “I have always admired women; in my way, at least, as much as you have in yours—unluckily for me,” he added in a bitter, mocking tone.
“And now your admiration is to take shape in a definite preference for one?” said the vicar, rather diffidently.
Vernon was restless and uneasy; he snapped twigs off the hedge as he walked along, and seemed unable to look his brother in the face.
“What does my preference matter?” he asked, at last, almost fiercely. “What did it matter before, except to bring upon me the shame and shadow of my whole life?”
His brother looked shocked and alarmed at this outburst. He put his arm, which Vernon had thrown off, again most persuasively through that of the younger man.
“Come, come,” he said, very earnestly, very affectionately; “you must not talk like that. You lead a life—voluntarily, mind, else there would be no grandeur, no dignity, in it—so full of austerity and self-sacrifice that you are winning yourself almost the reputation of a saint. You have shown an example of courage and endurance such as few men would have the steadfastness to follow—not I, for one, I admit. You are loved by your parishioners. And it is scarcely too much to say that by your own family—Evelyn, myself, and the little ones—you are adored.”
The Vicar of Rishton watched his brother’s face closely as he pronounced these words in full tones of deep feeling. They took effect at once. The thin, sensitive face relaxed, and a faint smile hovered on Vernon’s lips as he answered—
“You are all very good to me, and I love you for it; but you don’t need to be told that now. As for all that about my being a saint and a martyr, it is nonsense, and only a kind way of putting the fact that ten years ago——”
“Now why trouble yourself about what happened ten years ago?” interrupted the vicar in grave but most gentle tones. “The evil wrought then has been bitterly repented of, and atoned for in a manner so noble that I can scarcely speak of it without tears.”
“Noble? Nonsense! There was nothing in what I have done but the outcome of a most commonplace human feeling. I don’t wish to deceive you about that, or get more credit than is due to me.”