He had not turned his back on her when she committed her mad escapade, got herself talked about; angry as he was with her, he had not shown it, only remonstrated quietly with her, and in vain. He had put up with all her tempers without a murmur; his lovely disposition had never once been at fault, or broken down under the strain. Finally, he had been prepared to give up for her sake the profession he so deeply loved, and she had thrown his renunciation back in his face; if he met with a fatal accident, she alone would be responsible for it.
She held her head as high as ever, and only Carlton and Lavinia guessed what she suffered, but with the end of the steeplechase season, relief came, and she drew a free breath. For six months at least, Chris would be safe, and as in the nature of things, he was bound to be oftener in town, it was inevitable that sooner or later they must meet.
And at last they did. One day they passed each other close in Piccadilly, Gay driving herself, and Chris in a hansom with the Mrs. Guest who had been at Lossie's wedding. They produced a flashing impression of youth, gaiety, and good looks, and so completely wrapped up in each other were they, that they did not even see Gay, who drove on with the furies in her heart.
So that was the reason that he could not forgive her, because another woman had taken her place in his heart... Jealousy, overpowering, terrible, racked poor Gay from then onwards—never had she loved Chris so much, never was it more impossible by look or word to try to call him back to her.
It was equally certain that Chris was resolute not to put himself within reach of such calling. In proportion to a man's love for a woman, is her power to influence him for good or evil, and Chris owed her a secret grudge for inflicting on him an injury that had done him no more good, morally, than Carlton's rejection of Lossie's love had once done her. The Mrs. Guest episode brought him little pleasure, and was not precisely of his own seeking—considerably to his surprise, too, his present existence did not satisfy him as it had done, and at odd times he thought of that other life which he could so pleasantly have lived at St. Swithin's.
He felt a brute to keep away from Lavinia, but in the frame of mind he then was, knew himself to be no fit company for her. Yet in the event, just as her life had been one long occasion of making opportunities for others, so by her death were the two hopelessly alienated people she loved best in the world, to be at last brought together.
In June came the cruel, mercifully brief illness that had threatened her so long, and Gay was constantly at hand to help her bear it, but it was to Chris she clung, who on his part plainly dreaded to be parted from her, realising too late, how lonely he would be, when the one woman who had so good an influence over him was gone. Had he been her own, the son that Lavinia had coveted, he could not have been more to her than he was, displaying qualities that made Gay admire and love him more with every hour. Watchful and devoted, the full tenderness and manliness of his nature were revealed with a fulness that only made the more marked his attitude towards Gay, to whom he remained cold, courteous, and completely indifferent always.
Once it half broke her heart to hear him, when he thought her absent, give Lavinia a message for his mother. Gay loved the simplicity of belief that never doubted the old friends would meet, suspected Chris's longing—who knows?—to be going himself to the one he so loved, and had never ceased to want.
"It will please her better that I can tell her you are very happy, Laddie," said Lavinia, who by a light invisible, saw what he did not. "And, you know, after all there is only one thing that matters, one first, last word—Love"—but he did not seem to hear her; there was a hard little kernel of bitterness in his heart against Gay, that nothing seemed able to remove.
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