Sidney Martin kept his resolve. He blotted out that fatal mistake he had made. Above it he built a fair edifice of energy, integrity, and honor. His uncle's heart delighted in him, and he won golden opinions from all his uncle's old friends. When John Martin died, he left Sidney not only his share as head of the firm, but landed estates in Yorkshire bringing in some thousands a year—all entailed upon his next heir male.
It was a brilliant position for a man under thirty, but no one could have stepped into it with more dignity and grace than did Sidney Martin. His co-executor was his uncle's old friend, Colonel Cleveland, who had lived chiefly abroad for the last ten years, and who naturally left everything in his hands. There were a few complimentary legacies, and some pensions left to old servants. Sidney was munificent in his payment of these bequests, adding gifts of his own to them as he paid them to his uncle's poorer legatees. On his cousin, George Martin, he settled at once the sum of £10,000, and gave £5000 each to George's married sisters. Their gratitude was very moderately expressed, but George's feeling of obligation to his cousin was sincere and deep. This provision would enable him to marry without longer waiting for a living. At present he was a curate in the East of London, with the modest stipend of £100 a year.
By this time Sophy, and that boyish error of his, had almost slipped out of his memory. His life had been very full since then, and he had passed from boyhood into manhood. He had devoted himself with keen interest to his uncle's business; and, in the close emulation of a vast-reaching commerce, stretching out its hands to the farthest region of the habitable globe, he had ceased to be conscious of the peril ever hanging over his head as long as his uncle lived. Now his uncle's death altered his position, and it would no longer be ruin to him for his disastrous marriage to be discovered. But he was in no way inclined to confess his early blunder.
Sidney possessed an unusual degree of energy and ardor, and these had found ample scope in the affairs of his firm. He had traveled almost all over the known world, except in the interior of the great continents, and he had greatly enjoyed his travels. He was not merely a fortune-hunter; he was a close and interested observer both of man and nature. He lived very much outside of himself, filling his mind with impressions from without, rather than seeking to understand and deepen the principles of his own nature. There had been a consciousness of a hidden sin waiting to be dragged out and repented of, which prevented him from looking too closely at himself. At eight and twenty he was a very different being from the boy, fresh from college, who had flung away his future in a rash marriage. Yet, with an instinct working almost unconsciously within him, he avoided all intimacy and close acquaintance with the women with whom he came in contact. His uncle had never married, and the establishment had been a bachelor one, but there were families and houses enough where Sidney was made effusively welcome. He gained the reputation of being a cynical woman-hater. In fact, their society was too full of peril for him to enjoy it with an ordinary degree of pleasure. That buried secret of his, over which the grass was growing, must be dug up and brought to light if he thought of marrying; and with an intuitive dread of the necessary investigations, he shrank from forming any fresh attachment. At the same time, his life hitherto had been too full of other interests for him to feel the loss of home ties.
"All the world tells me you are not a marrying man, Sidney," said Colonel Cleveland, one evening, when they stood for a minute on the steps for their club, before parting for the night. Colonel Cleveland had come back to England soon after hearing of his old friend's death, and several interviews had taken place between him and Sidney, but he had never invited Sidney to his home.
"Yes; I shall remain a bachelor, like my uncle," said Sidney, with a pleasant smile, "and adopt one of George Martin's boys, as Sir John adopted me. There's less responsibility than with sons of one's own."
"If that's true, you may come and see my daughter Margaret," replied Colonel Cleveland, "and I put you on your honor. She is all I have, is Margaret, and I want to keep her to myself as long as I can. The child knows hardly anybody but me, and she is as happy as the day. All the women I know pester me to let her come out, as they call it. But I say women are best at home, and I'm not going to have my one girl made into a fashionable fool."
"Is there any risk of that?" asked Sidney, laughing.
"Not at present," he answered; "but there's no knowing what a girl of twenty might become. Leave her in my hands till she's thirty, and I'll turn her out a sensible woman. She was fond of your uncle, Sidney, and he was very fond of her. I declare, we might have done you an ill turn if we have been more worldly wise. But they had not met for years when he died."
"You have kept her too much at home," said Sidney.