“Well, now that we’ve settled that point, let me retort your own remark upon yourself. I don’t think you’re looking quite your best!”
“I daresay not,” she replied in a low voice; and a sudden shadow seemed to overspread her face. “I’ve had some troubles lately. It’s a matter about which I’ve been long wishing to consult you, but I couldn’t easily write about it. I’m so glad to have this opportunity!”
“Do you think,” she began again, after a minute’s silence, and with a visible embarrassment of manner most unusual in her, “that a promise, deliberately and solemnly given, is always binding—except, of course, where its fulfilment would involve some actual sin?”
“I ca’n’t think of any other exception at this moment,” I said. “That branch of casuistry is usually, I believe, treated as a question of truth and untruth——”
“Surely that is the principle?” she eagerly interrupted. “I always thought the Bible-teaching about it consisted of such texts as ‘lie not one to another’?”
“I have thought about that point,” I replied; “and it seems to me that the essence of lying is the intention of deceiving. If you give a promise, fully intending to fulfil it, you are certainly acting truthfully then; and, if you afterwards break it, that does not involve any deception. I cannot call it untruthful.”
Another pause of silence ensued. Lady Muriel’s face was hard to read: she looked pleased, I thought, but also puzzled; and I felt curious to know whether her question had, as I began to suspect, some bearing on the breaking off of her engagement with Captain (now Major) Lindon.
“You have relieved me from a great fear,” she said; “but the thing is of course wrong, somehow. What texts would you quote, to prove it wrong?”
“Any that enforce the payment of debts. If A promises something to B, B has a claim upon A. And A’s sin, if he breaks his promise, seems to me more analogous to stealing than to lying.”
“It’s a new way of looking at it—to me,” she said; “but it seems a true way, also. However, I won’t deal in generalities, with an old friend like you! For we are old friends, somehow. Do you know, I think we began as old friends?” she said with a playfulness of tone that ill accorded with the tears that glistened in her eyes.