‘Yes; and you must excuse me for mentioning it. I feel it a duty, I may say. There is no harm in your leaving Bradstane under the present circumstances; but there might have been, but for something that has taken place since the concert. But for this, I should have told you plainly, as a friend, that you would do foolishly to go away, and leave your fiancée exposed to the possibility of receiving further attentions from Otho Askam. It would have been by no means an impossible contingency. Now, I am glad to say, there is no danger of it.’
‘Indeed; and pray to what fortunate circumstance am I indebted for such immunity?’
‘Just to this, that after the concert he saw Miss Wynter home, proposed to her, and was accepted. He had accomplished his purpose of frightening and subduing her, though it seems to me that in order to clinch his victory he had to go farther than he intended.’
‘She has got him at last, then,’ said Roger with contempt. ‘And now I think of it, that will be an advantage to me, for she can never have anything more to say to my little girl, and there will be an end to an intimacy which I have always detested.’
‘Yes, you are right to be glad of that. Hers is not a friendship I should desire for any woman in whom I was interested.’
‘The wicked always gain their ends,’ said Roger, unguardedly. ‘I did hope she would never succeed in catching him, so far as I hoped anything about it.’
‘She is not so fortunate, even from her point of view, as you suppose,’ said Gilbert, tranquilly. ‘She has certainly got what she aimed at, but sadly deteriorated from what it was when she first began to scheme for it, and with it she has got a lot of other things thrown in, which she could well have dispensed with. If she were any one else I should feel sorry for her.’
‘You say that what she schemed for is deteriorated; now, excuse my saying it, but how is it that you too cling to that man? That is a thing which I have been wondering ever since you came here this year.’
Gilbert’s face changed a little.
‘I suppose it must be unaccountable to many another, as well as to you,’ he said. ‘I can only say that it is because he was true to me, in his way, long ago, when I had other hopes and other ambitions than I have now. He was not afraid to declare that he was my friend, and that whoever spoke against me, insulted him. It would conduce greatly to my comfort and peace of mind, if I could forget that; but I cannot. So my relations to him are defined, not by my present opinion of him, but by his conduct towards me in former days. Other things happened at that time; I know it is useless to speak to you of it, but he stood my friend when no one else would have done. Otho Askam is my Old Man of the Sea. We all have one of some kind, and it seems to me that the best thing to do with them is to carry them quietly as long as one’s strength holds out.’