‘It’s a low kind of amusement, I think,’ she began.
‘Not at all—at least, not of necessity. You must excuse me for contradicting you; but——’
‘Well, if he keeps this place to get money, why not turn horse-dealer at once?’ said Eleanor, resentfully.
Michael felt that extreme innocence can, and does ask more awkward questions, in perfect good faith, than the most hardened wickedness could possibly devise. If he had spoken the truth aloud, he would have been obliged to say that the fact of being a horse-dealer by profession could scarcely be considered a reproach to a man, whatever ignorant young ladies might think on the subject; but that in Otho Askam’s neck-or-nothing way of carrying on what he was pleased to call his ‘business,’ there was matter for reproach, and that, as a matter of fact, a respectable horse-dealer had the pull over the master of Thorsgarth, as regarded character. But he could not say this to Miss Askam, who evidently considered the matter in another light—as a low pursuit, namely,—one, perhaps, of other low pursuits which her brother was in the habit of following. It let a new light into his mind as to her character and her ignorance, and he followed a natural impulse—the impulse to reassure her.
‘You really think quite too much about it,’ he said, lightly. ‘Every true Yorkshire man—and every true border-man, for that matter—has a strain of the jockey in him. And when a man lives in the country, and has his soul in country pursuits it is inevitable that horses should come into the list.’
‘That horses should come into the list!’ repeated Eleanor, in the same tone of mortification. ‘How many more things come into the list of country pursuits? “Running factories,” that is one—buying shares: he told me that his friend, Mr. Langstroth, kept him from plunging too deep into that.’ She had forgotten who was with her; and as she uttered the next words, a flash of lurid, hideous light seemed to burn the meaning of it all into her brain. ‘Card-parties——’ Her breath failed her for a moment. Michael never forgot the voice with which she suddenly asked him, with desperate, urgent haste, ‘Mr. Langstroth, for God’s sake—is Otho a gambler?’
Michael hesitated for one moment. But he knew he could not shirk the question. So asked, it must be answered truly, however cruel the blow.
‘I’m sorry you have asked me that question,’ said he. ‘But there is only one answer to it. He is a born gambler.’
He awaited her next words with an eagerness and anxiety which surprised himself, and when no words came, he was again surprised at the feeling of chill regret which came over him. For Eleanor made no answer whatever to his answer to her question. The vibrating eagerness of her voice, of the voice with which she had asked if Otho were a gambler, was stilled. In the darkness, which was now deep, they rode on in drear, unbroken silence. What she felt, what she thought, she did not betray. She was not made of the stuff that wails and laments over the discovery that life is not a track of smooth grass, warmed by unclouded sunshine.
‘Well,’ said Michael to himself, as this silence grew more and more oppressive to him; ‘she asked the question. I had to speak the truth. She must have learnt it sooner or later. I can’t imagine how it is she has not found it out already....’ Then an intense, eager wish. ‘If she would only speak! How she must hate me! Yes, she must hate me for telling her that. How can she help? I expect she is wishing now that she had never seen me. It’s a pity for her that she should have come up here, to be thrown into the midst of such doings. Otho for her brother, Magdalen for her friend, and my brother—well, for l’ami de la maison! A nice company for her to be in.... And, after all, what is it to me? Only it’s a piece of cursed ill-luck that I should have got mixed up with her at all.... I wish she would speak.’