Then he remembered his promise to accompany her to the terminus at Paddington. He could not go—he would not go! But that was some hours distant yet, and for a while he felt that he need not trouble himself about it.
But what should he do? Write a long letter to Laura, telling her that she was to forgive his weakness of the past night, and bid her farewell for ever, while he made immediate arrangements for going abroad somewhere? Was it too late in life for him to get a commission? If he could, he would have to wait months perhaps, and he wanted to leave England at once. Africa seemed to present the field that would afford him the most variety and change. He would go there for a few years. He could soon make arrangements; and in the excitement of hunting, he would find the diversion he so much required.
But then about Laura? He recalled the scene at Lexville, where she had hung upon his arm and wept; and then the events of the past night flashed upon him, and he groaned as he told himself that he had been cowardly and weak—that as yet he had had no proof that Ella was lost to him for ever.
What was the last night’s scene, then?
He stamped upon the floor with impotent rage, and determined at last to forswear all ties. He went out directly after lunch to make preliminary inquiries respecting the means for leaving England. Paddington, Laura, Max, Miss Bedford, were driven from his mind, and he hurried along, but only to hear his name uttered as he passed an open carriage; and starting and turning round, there was Laura, flushed and happy-looking, sitting with her hands outstretched to him.
He could not help himself, though he called himself weak and folly-stricken, as he took her hand in his, watching the bright flush give way to a deadly pallor.
“How she loves me!” thought Charley, as he leaned on the side of the barouche; and it was from no vanity or conceit; he was too true-hearted and genuine, too honest and simple-minded. “Why should I make her unhappy, perhaps for life, when, by a sacrifice, I can send joy into her heart—into the heart of that loving old man? What have I to care for, what to live for, that I should hesitate?”
“Ella!” his conscience whispered; but the whisper was very faint; it was hardly heard amidst the tumult of contending thoughts. The African scheme was forgotten, and Charley Vining was in the balance. One vigorous pressure on either scale would carry the beam down. How was it to be?
How was it to be? The indicator was pointing directly upwards, each scale poised and motionless. Coldness, distant behaviour, returned letters, an evidently favoured rival—a man almost beneath contempt—misery for those who loved him, and more bitterness: all these in one scale; and in the other—
A passionate determined love, strong as his own, a woman pleading to him for what he had so long refused, warmth, tenderness, no rivalry, gratification to Sir Philip, and, above all, the knowledge that on the past night he had allowed himself to be betrayed into a warmth for which he had been blaming himself as though he had committed a grievous sin.