There were times when Morley thought of asking Ethel to bind herself to him in writing; but he soon thrust the idea aside as mistrusting and melodramatic. There were other occasions when he actually thought of imploring her to contract a stronger tie, by consenting to a secret marriage; but it seemed an abuse of her kind and easy father's hospitality, and a violation of the trust reposed in him, and this, too, he abandoned, resolving to trust to Ethel's faith, to patience, and to time.
Poor Morley! He knew how dark and lonely seemed the three years of their past separation, and he felt keenly how much more lonely and dark would be the vague years of that which was to follow.
Then the pictures he drew of this long severance from Ethel—the voyage by sea for so many weeks, so many months; a residence in another land, with strangers, rich and attractive, perhaps, about her—a severance during which she would be hourly exposed to the attentions and addresses of a rival so cunning, so artful, so enterprising, and, in some respects, not so unpleasing, as Cramply Hawkshaw, filled him with intense apprehension, anxiety, and disgust.
"Why should I not go with her?" thought he, suddenly. "The money which will enable me to do so I shall only squander here in England, it may be, without avail, while there, in the Mauritius, a new sphere will be open to me."
Like all impulsive people, on this new idea he acted at once. He wrote to the agents for the Hermione to secure a cabin passage for himself, a measure which Captain Hawkshaw, for some reason as yet unknown, had omitted to take, though Mr. Basset had always more than half indicated that he was to accompany him abroad.
Now, when it was announced and definitely settled at Laurel Lodge that Morley was to go, the spite and disappointment of the ex-digger and soi-disant captain of Texan Rangers was ill-concealed indeed; for, doubtless, he considered it no joke to lose all chance of a lovely bride, with a fair prospect of getting—excuse us for using his own phraseology—"into comfortable diggings," under the wing of a colonial official.
After Morley wrote to London, two days elapsed without an answer coming from the agents, and the anxious dread of Ethel and himself, lest there was no more accommodation in the Hermione, was so great that he vowed he would go before the mast rather than be left behind.
Already Laurel Lodge had a somewhat dismantled aspect. Bookshelves were emptied in the library; the walls were denuded of pictures in dining-room and drawing-rooms; choice plants in the conservatory and rare flowers in the garden had been given away to the Pages and other old friends.
Chests, bales, and boxes, corded, labelled, and all very "outward bound" in aspect, encumbered all the hall and vestibule, indicating but too surely that the Bassets were on the eve of departure; and now came their last Sunday in the old village church.
Morley Ashton and Captain Hawkshaw were in the same pew with Mr. Basset's family.