Poor Mona!
"I met a Borrowness acquaintance in the theatre to-night," she said, "and promised to go down for a day or two at Christmas. Uncle Douglas, you did not ask to see my genealogical tree before you took me to Norway. I am proud of the fact that my grandfather rose from the ranks; and, even if I were not, I could not consent to draw all my acquaintances from one set. There are four links in the chain—your world, you, me, my world. Your world won't let you go, and I can't let my world go. If you must break the chain, you can only do it in one place."
"I don't believe you would care a straw if I did."
"I should care intensely," said Mona, her eyes filling with tears. "It seems like a fairy tale that a brilliant man of the world like you should be so good to commonplace me; and, besides—you know I love you almost as if you were my father. But, indeed, now that I know you and Aunt Maud, you may trust me in future always to think of what is due to you."
She had risen from her chair as she spoke, and he strode across the hearth-rug and kissed her affectionately.
"There, there," he said, "she shall dictate her own terms! Thank heaven at least that that old frump is well across the Atlantic!"
He went away, and Mona was left alone, to think over the events of the day. Doris and the Sahib, Monteith and Lucy,—it was the old tale over again,—"The one shall be taken, and the other left." How strange it seemed that life should run smoothly for Doris, with all her grand power of self-surrender; and that poor little Lucy, with her innocent, childlike expectation of happiness, should be called upon to suffer!
"——so horribly," Mona added; but in her heart she was beginning to hope that Lucy had not been so hard hit after all.
And for herself, how did the equation run? As the Sahib is to Doris, so is somebody to me? or, as Monteith is to Lucy, so is somebody to me? No, no, no! That was impossible. Monteith had never treated Lucy as Dr Dudley had treated her.
During all these months what had caused Mona the acutest suffering was an anguish of shame. It never remained with her long, but it recurred whenever she was worn out and depressed. She had long since realised that, from an outsider's point of view, her experience that winter night was in no way so exceptional as she had supposed,—that there were thousands of men who would give such expression to a moment's transient passion. But surely, surely Dr Dudley was not one of these, and surely any man must see that with a woman like her it must be everything or nothing! If he had indeed torn her soul out and given her nothing in return, why then—then—— But she never could finish the sentence, for the recollection of a hundred words and actions and looks came back, and turned the gall into sweetness. And she always ended with the same old cry—"If only I had told him about my life, if only I had given him no shadow of a reason to think that I had deceived him!"