“Care about him!” and she turned her sweet blue eyes upwards. “I love him with all my heart and soul and strength. I have always loved him; I always shall love him. I love him so well that I can do my duty to him, Reginald. It is my duty to strain every nerve to prevent this marriage. I had rather that my heart should ache than Ernest’s. I implore of you to help me.”
“Dorothy, it has always been my dearest wish that you should marry Ernest. I told him so just before that unhappy duel. I love you both. All the fibres of my heart that are left alive have wound themselves around you. Jeremy I could never care for. Indeed, I fear that I used sometimes to treat the boy harshly. He reminds me so of his father. And do you know, my dear, I sometimes think that on that point I am not quite sane. But because you have asked me to do it, and because you have quoted your dear mother—may peace be with her!—I will do what I can. This girl Eva is of age, and I will write and offer her a home. She need fear no persecution here.”
“You are kind and good, Reginald, and I thank you.”
“The letter shall go by to-night’s post. But run away now; I see my friend De Talor coming to speak to me;” and the white eyebrows drew near together in a way that it would have been unpleasant for the great De Talor to behold. “That business is drawing towards its end.”
“O Reginald,” answered Dorothy, shaking her forefinger at him in her old childish way, “haven’t you given up those ideas yet? They are very wrong.”
“Never mind, Dorothy. I shall give them up soon, when I have squared accounts with De Talor. A year or two more—a stern chase is a long chase, you know—and the thing will be done, and then I shall become a good Christian again.”
The letter was written. It offered Eva a home and protection.
In due course an answer, signed by Eva herself, came back. It thanked him for his kindness, and regretted that circumstances and “her sense of duty” prevented her from accepting the offer.
Then Dorothy felt that she had done all that in her lay, and gave the matter up.
It was about this time that Florence drew another picture. It represented Eva as Andromeda gazing hopelessly in the dim light of a ghastly dawn out across a glassy sea; and far away in the oily depths there was a ripple, and beneath the ripple a form travelling towards the chained maiden. The form had a human head and cold gray eyes, and its features were those of Mr. Plowden.