Baskerville had been looking abstractedly out of the window at the carriages flashing past, but at this he turned quickly to Elizabeth. “You mean Senator Clavering?” Baskerville was a remarkably self-contained man, but in his burst of surprise the name fell from his lips before he knew it.
Elizabeth sat dumb. She had yielded to a mad impulse, and would have given a year of her life to have unsaid those words. Baskerville hesitated for a minute or two, and then rose. Elizabeth’s silence, the painful flushing of her face, her whole attitude of conscious guilt, proclaimed the truth of Baskerville’s surmise. He looked at her in pity and commiseration. She had just told him enough to make him understand how great the temptation was to her; and yet so far she had not yielded. But that she would yield he had not the least doubt. And what untold miseries would not she, or any woman like her, bring upon herself by marrying Clavering!
It was a question which neither one of them could discuss, and Baskerville’s only words were: “I have no right to offer you my advice, except on the point upon which you have consulted me, but I beg of you to consider well what you are thinking of. You are hovering over dreadful possibilities for yourself. Good night.”
He was going, but Elizabeth ran and grasped his arm. “You won’t speak of this to Miss Clavering! You must not do it! You have no right!”
Baskerville smiled rather bitterly. Whether Elizabeth were afraid or ashamed he did not know—probably both.
“Certainly I shall not,” he said, and to Elizabeth’s ears his tone expressed the most entire contempt.
“And I haven’t promised him—I haven’t agreed yet,” she added, tears coming into her eyes; and then Baskerville was gone.
Elizabeth sat, stunned by her own folly, and burning with shame at the scorn she fancied Baskerville had felt for her. He had been kind to her and had agreed to do all that was possible with McBean, but by her own act she had lost his good will and respect. Well, it was part of the web of destiny. She was being driven to marry Clavering by every circumstance of her life—even this last. Pelham’s unkindness was the beginning of it; McBean’s persecution helped it on; General Brandon’s goodness and generosity, Baskerville’s contempt for her—all urged her on; she supposed Baskerville would probably have nothing more to do with her affairs and would leave her to face McBean alone, and that would be the end of her resistance to Clavering.
She went up to her own room and, with a cloak huddled about her, sat by the window in the dark, looking out upon the splendid scene of a great ball in a capital city. Elizabeth in the cold and darkness watched it all—watched until the ambassadors’ carriages were called, followed rapidly by the other equipages which were parked in the surrounding streets for blocks. At last, after three o’clock in the morning, the trampling of horses’ hoofs, the closing of carriage doors, and the commotion of footmen and coachmen ceased—the great affair was over. Quickly as in the transformation scene at a theatre, the splendid house grew dark—all except the windows of Clavering’s library. They remained brilliantly lighted long after all else in the street was dark and quiet.