But will honour make a man blind to beauty, deaf to the music of a voice, impervious to the subtle charms of all that is purest, best, and loveliest in womanhood? Theodore began to think that he had done wrong in bringing his friend within the influence of irresistible charms.
“I was a fool to think that he could help himself; I was a worse fool to suppose that she will ever care for me—the humdrum cousin whom she has known all her life—the country solicitor whose image she has always associated with leases and bills of dilapidation—a little more than a bailiff, and a little less than a gentleman.”
They consigned the dog-cart to the village ostler, who was expiating the jovial self-indulgence of Saturday night in the penitential drowsiness of Sunday morning, and they were in their places in the grey old church when Lady Carmichael came to the chancel pew. Theodore’s watchful eyes followed her from her entrance in a halo of sunshine, which was suddenly obscured as the curtain dropped behind her, to the moment when she bowed her head in prayer. He saw her face brighten as she passed the pew where he and his friend were sitting, and he told himself that it was Cuthbert’s presence which conjured up that happier light in her soft, dark eyes. On the walk from the church to the Priory it was with Cuthbert she talked—Cuthbert the irrepressible, who had so much to say that he must needs find listeners. It was Cuthbert who sat next her at luncheon, and who engrossed her attention throughout the meal. It was Cuthbert who went through the hot-houses, fern-houses, and greenhouses with her after luncheon, and gave her practical lessons in botany and entomology as they went along, and who promised her some Austrian frogs. The day was one long triumph for Cuthbert Ramsay, and he gave himself up to the intoxication of the hour as a drunkard surrenders to strong drink, unconditionally, without thought of the morrow.
“What do you think of your friend’s infatuation now?” asked Janet, with her most biting accent, as she and Theodore followed in the horticultural procession, she carefully picking up her gown at every one of those treacherous puddles which are to be found in the best-regulated hot-houses. “Have you any doubt in your mind now?”
“No. I have no doubt.”
The carriages were at the door half an hour afterwards, and all through the homeward drive Cuthbert was silent as the grave. Only as they came into Dorchester did he find speech to say,—
“I shall have to go back to town early to-morrow morning, Theodore!”
“So soon. What an unquiet spirit you are! You’ll come back to us next Friday or Saturday, I hope.”
“I don’t know. I’ll try; but I’m rather afraid I can’t.”
Theodore did not press the point, and his friend kept his word, and left by the first train on Monday morning, after having been intolerably stupid on Sunday evening, according to the sisters, who were disposed to think themselves especially ill-used by Mr. Ramsay’s obvious infatuation for Lady Carmichael.