"My dear boy, it will all come out right in the end. Science and your own will can do much, and as for the rest, perhaps Miss Penrhyn will do for you what those letters intimate Sionèd did for your grandfather."
Dartmouth got up and leaned his elbow on the mantelpiece.
"I do not know that I shall marry Weir Penrhyn," he said.
"Why not? Because your grandfather had an intrigue with her grandmother?—which, by the way, is by no means clearly proved. That there was a plan on foot to that end the letters pretty well show, but—"
"I don't care a hang about the sins of my ancestors, or of Weir's either—if that were all. If I do not marry her it will be because I do not care to shatter an ideal into still smaller bits. I loved her with what little good was left in me. I placed her on a pedestal and rejoiced that I was able so to do. Now she is the woman whose guilty love sent us both to our death. I could never forget it. There would always be a spot on the sun."
"My God, Harold," exclaimed Hollington, "you are mad. Of all the insane, ridiculous, idiotic speeches that ever came from man's lips, that is the worst."
"I can't help it, Becky. The idea, the knowledge, is my very life and soul; and when you think it all over you will see that there are many things that cannot be explained—Weir's words in the gallery, for instance. They coincide exactly with the vision I had four nights later. And a dozen other things—you can think them out for yourself. When you do, you will understand that there is but one light in which to look at the question: Weir Penrhyn and I are Lionel Dartmouth and Sionèd Penrhyn reborn, and that is the end of the matter."
Hollington groaned, and threw himself back in his chair with an impatient gesture.
"Well," he said, after a few moments' silence, "accepting your remarkable premisses for the sake of argument, will you kindly enlighten me as to since when you became so beautifully complete and altogether puerile a moralist? Suppose you did sin with her some three-quarters of a century ago, have not time and suffering purified you both—or rather her? I suppose it does not make so much difference about you."
"It is not that. It is the idea that is revolting—that this girl should have been my mistress at any time—"