John Marston was perfectly right. He was a savage, untameable blackguard. He went upstairs into his bedroom. The two angels were with him. They are with all of us at such times as these. There is no plagiarism here. The fact is too old for that.
Up and down, up and down. The bedroom was not long enough; so he opened the door of the dressing-room; and that was not long enough; and so he opened the door of what had been the nursery in a happier household than his; and walked up and down through them all. And Adelaide sat below, before a single candle, with pale face and clenched lips, listening to his footfall on the floor above.
She knew as well as if an angel had told her what was passing in his mind as he walked up and down. She had foreseen this crisis plainly—you may laugh at me, but she had. She had seen that if, by any wild conjunction of circumstances, Charles Ravenshoe were alive, and if he were to come across him before Lord Saltire's death, events would arrange themselves exactly as they were doing on this terrible evening. There was something awfully strange in the realisation of her morbid suspicions.
Yes, she had seen thus far, and had laughed at herself for entertaining such mad fancies. But she had seen no further. What the upshot would be was hidden from her like a dark veil, black and impenetrable as the fog which was hanging over Waterloo Bridge at that moment, which made the squalid figure of a young, desperate girl show like a pale, fluttering ghost, leading a man whom we know well, a man who followed her, on the road to—what?
The rest, though, seemed to be, in some sort, in her own hands. Wealth, position in the world, the power of driving her chariot over the necks of those who had scorned her—the only things for which her worthless heart cared—were all at stake.
"He will murder me," she said, "but he shall hear me."
Still, up and down, over head, his heavy footfall went to and fro.
Seldom, in any man's life, comes such a trial as his this night. A good man might have been hard tried in such circumstances. What hope can we have of a desperate blackguard like Lord Ascot? He knew Lord Saltire hated him; he knew that Lord Saltire had only left his property to him because he thought Charles Ravenshoe was dead; and yet he hesitated whether or no he should tell Lord Saltire that he had seen Charles, and ruin himself utterly.
Was he such an utter rascal as John Marston made him out? Would such a rascal have hesitated long? What could make a man without a character, without principle, without a care about the world's opinion, hesitate at such a time as this? I cannot tell you.
He was not used to think about things logically or calmly: and so, as he paced up and down, it was some time before he actually arranged his thoughts. Then he came to this conclusion, and put it fairly before him—that, if he let Lord Saltire know that Charles Ravenshoe was alive, he was ruined; and that, if he did not, he was a villain.