“But you forgive me—can you?”
“I could forgive you anything, my dear, except your persistency in the belief that you stand in need of my forgiveness. Now we must hasten on to our destination; and if you see any of the modish people nudge each other whispering, ‘Old fool!’ as we pass, you will only smile, knowing as you now do that they are the fools and that I am none.”
She did not move from where she was standing, and a puzzled expression was on her face—an unsatisfied expression—not, however, quite a dissatisfied one. Once or twice her lips parted as if she were about to speak, but some minutes had passed before she found her voice; then she said:
“I do not understand more than one thing, and that is that you are the best and noblest man who lives in the world, and that I shall never deceive you.”
“It is not in your nature to deceive any one,” said he. “Some people—they are, however, few—are so gifted by nature.”
CHAPTER IX
When Richard Sheridan hastily left Sydney Gardens on the appearance of Long with Betsy Linley by his side, causing thereby all the faculties of subtle discrimination and of still more subtle deduction of at least one of the ladies of the fascinating group to be awakened, he sought neither the allurements of the gossip of the Pump Room nor the distractions of the scandal of the Assembly Rooms. He felt a longing for some place where he could hide himself from the eyes of all men—some sanctuary on an island where he might eat his heart out, far from the crowd who take a delight in making a mock of one who sits down to such a banquet.
He had left his father’s house after breakfast, determined that no one whom he might meet should be able to perceive from his demeanour anything of what he felt on the subject of Betsy Linley’s engagement to Mr. Long. He had heard the announcement of this engagement on the previous evening when leaving the Concert Rooms where Betsy had sung and her brother Tom had played, and it had come upon him with the force of a great blow—a blow from which no recovery was possible for him. That was why he had accepted the invitation of one of his friends to supper, with cards to follow. For several months he had resisted steadily the allurements of such forms of entertainment, for then the reward which he held before himself for his abstinence was the winning of the girl whom he had loved since he and she had been children together. But now that his dream was broken he felt in that cynical mood with which the plunge is congenial. He welcomed the opportunity of plunging. When the waters had closed over his head, they would shut out from his sight the odious vision which had followed his pleasant dreams of past years.