"Heath again! Is the viper always to be in my path, and imagine I shall not crush him at last? What is the meaning of his thrusting himself between us?" he asked her, with great fierceness. "What the devil is at the bottom of it? What makes him so anxious to have you married? I am a beggar, and he knows it; yet first one thing, then the other, he has nothing but schemes to make me marry you. Wanted me to be a quill-driver, that I might be rich enough to marry. Marry, marry, marry! By God! there is something in it which I will discover."
"Cecil, dearest Cecil, you terrify me!"
He paced angrily up and down the room, without attending to her. A horrible suspicion had taken possession of his mind: he thought that Captain Heath had not only been her lover, but that his passion had been returned, and that it was to conceal the consequences of their guilty love that a marriage with any one seemed so desirable.
"I see it all," he said to himself, as he strode about the room; "they have selected me as their gull. It is a collusion. From whom, but from her, should he have known we had taken that moonlight stroll in the shrubbery? Why should he take upon himself the office of sentinel? Why offer me a situation? Why follow us up to town? How should he know we were to elope? Why should he, in God's name, be anxious to have her married, when it is quite clear he loves her, or has loved her, himself? He owned it last night—owned that he loved her! I do believe, when he carried off the ladder, he knew I was in the room, and adopted that mode of making me irretrievably commit myself.—But it is not too late.—We are not married yet!"
How curiously passion colours facts! No one will say that Cecil had not what is called abundant "evidence" for his suspicion, and the evidence was coherent enough to justify to his own mind all that he thought. It is constantly so in life. We set out with a presumption, and all the "facts" fit in so well with the presumption, that we forget it is after all not the facts, but the interpretation which is the important thing we seek and instead of seeking this we have begun by assuming it; whereas had we assumed some other interpretation, we should perhaps have found the facts quite as significant, although the second interpretation would be diametrically opposed to the former.
Had Cecil, instead of seeking for corroborative facts to pamper his own irritable jealousy, just asked himself whether the characters of Blanche and the captain were not quite sufficient of themselves to throw discredit on any suspicion of the kind—whether, indeed, he ought to entertain such an idea of such persons, unless overwhelmed by the most clear, precise, unequivocal evidence—he would have saved himself all the tortures of jealousy, and would not have desecrated the worship of his love by thoughts so debasing and so odious.
Blanche, perfectly bewildered, sat silent and trembling, keeping her eyes fixed upon the strangely altered bearing of her lover.
Stopping from his agitated walk, he suddenly stood still, folded his arms, gazed at her with quiet fierceness, and said,—
"As Captain Heath takes so much interest in, you, perhaps he will have no objection to escort you back to your father."
"Cecil! ... Cecil! ... In Heaven's name, what do you mean?" she said, half rising from her chair; but afraid to trust her trembling limbs, she sank back again, and looked at him in helpless astonishment.