"Yes, dear Gustave. I will go to-morrow."
She went on the next day, and found Captain Paget much weaker than on her last visit.
It was evident that for him the end was very near. He was much changed and subdued by his long illness; but the spirit of worldliness had not been altogether exorcised even in this dismal period of self-communion.
"What does it all mean, Diana?" he asked. "I don't understand being kept in the dark like this. Here are you suddenly leaving Mr. Sheldon's house without rhyme or reason, to take up your quarters in lodgings with Mrs. Sheldon. Here is a mysterious marriage taking place at a time when I have been given to understand that one of the parties is at death's door; and here is Lenoble introduced to Valentine Hawkehurst, in express opposition to my particular request that my future son-in-law should be introduced to none of the Sheldon set."
"Valentine is not one of the Sheldon set, papa. I do not think it likely that he will ever see Philip Sheldon again."
"Bless my soul!" exclaimed Captain Paget. "There has been something serious going on, then, surely?"
After this he insisted on an explanation, and Diana told him the story of the last two or three weeks: Charlotte's increasing illness—so mysterious and incurable; the sudden return from Harold's Hill; Valentine's fears; Dr. Jedd's boldly-expressed opinion that the patient was the victim of foul play; the systematic exclusion of Philip Sheldon from the sick-room, followed immediately by symptoms of amelioration, leading to gradual recovery.
All this Captain Paget heard with an awe-stricken countenance. The distance that divides the shedder of blood from all other wrong-doers is so great, that the minor sinner feels himself a saint when he contemplates the guilt of the greater criminal.
"Great God! is this possible?" exclaimed the Captain, with a shudder.
"And I have taken that man's hand!"
Later in the evening, when Diana had left him, and he had been thinking seriously of his own career, and those many transactions of his troubled life which, in the slang denomination of the day, would be called "shady," he derived some scrap of comfort from one consideration.