“I fear she has a deeply-rooted prejudice against you. She may—most unjustly—blame you for her misery, because Colonel Tremayne was your friend.”
“Yes, that is her feeling, no doubt; it is on that account she hates me. Perhaps she is justified in her anger. I ought to have shot that scoundrel. Had we both lived fifty years sooner I suppose I should have shot him.”
“I don’t think you could have been called upon to do that even by the old code of honour. Mercy was not allied to you——”
“No; but she dwelt at my gates. She was under my protection—she had no other man living to defend her. I ought to have punished her seducer—it was incumbent on me to do it. Because there was no one else,” he added slowly, after a long pause.
“It may be on that account she rejects your generous offer. I cannot pretend to interpret her feelings; but there was certainly some strong personal prejudice on her part. She was deeply moved. She burst into a passion of sobs. ‘Not from him,’ she cried, ‘I will accept nothing from him. Of all the men upon this earth he shall be the last to help me!’”
Lord Cheriton flung the Quarterly from him with a passionate gesture, as he started to his feet and began to walk up and down the long clear space in front of the windows.
“Theodore,” he said suddenly, “you have not yet come face to face with all the problems of life. Perhaps you have not yet found out how hard it is to help people. I would have given much to be able to help that girl—to assure her an easy and reputable existence—the refinements of life amidst pleasant surroundings. What would it matter to me whether I allowed her one hundred or two hundred a year? All I desire is that her life should be happy. And of deliberate malice—of sheer perversity—she rejects my help, she dooms herself to the seamstress’ slavery, and to a garret in Lambeth. My God, to think that with all the will and all the power to help her, I cannot come between her and that sordid misery. It is hard, Theodore, it is very hard upon a man like me. There is nothing I hold of this world’s goods that I have not worked for honestly; and when I want to do good for others with what I have won, I am barred by their folly. It is enough to make me mad.”
Never before had Theodore seen this self-abandonment in his stately cousin, the man who bore in every tone and every gesture the impress of his acknowledged ascendency over his fellow-men. To see such a man as this so completely unhinged by a woman’s perversity was a new thing to Theodore Dalbrook; and his heart went out to his kinsman as it had never done before.
“My dear Cheriton, you have done all that was in your power to do for that mistaken young woman,” he said, holding out his hand, which the elder man grasped warmly. “Whatever wrong you may have unwittingly brought about by the presence of a blackguard under your roof, you have done your best to atone for that wrong. The most sensitive, the most punctilious of men could do no more.”
“I thank you, Theodore, for your sympathy. Yes, I have done my best for her—you will bear witness to that.”