His mother's name had always something of a spell for Roland. His head, so proudly held before, drooped suddenly, and he walked on in silence for some little time. Mr. Raymond was also silent. He had drawn some good augury from the altered carriage of the young man's head, and was loth to disturb the current of his thoughts. When Roland did at last raise his head, he turned and looked his friend and kinsman full in the face.
"Raymond," he said, "I am not a good man;" he was very fond of making this declaration, and I think he fancied that in so doing he made some vague atonement for his short-comings: "I am not a good man, but I am no hypocrite; I will not lie to you, or prevaricate with you. Perhaps there may be some justification for what you said just now, or there might be, if I were a different sort of man. But, as it is, I give you my honour you are mistaken. I have been digging no pit for a woman's innocent footsteps to stray into. I have been plotting no treachery against that honest fellow yonder. Remember, I do not by any means hold myself blameless. I have admired Mrs. Gilbert just as one admires a pretty child, and I have allowed myself to be amused by her sentimental talk, and have lent her books, and may perhaps have paid her a little more attention than I ought to have done. But I have done nothing deliberately. I have never for one moment had any purpose in my mind, or mixed her image with so much as a dream of—of—any tangible form. I have drifted into a dangerous position, or a position that might be dangerous to another man; but I can drift out of it as easily as I drifted in. I shall leave Midlandshire next month."
"And to-morrow the Gilberts dine with you at Mordred; and all through this month there will be the chance of your seeing Mrs. Gilbert, and lending her more books, and paying her more attention; and so on. It is not so much that I doubt you, Roland; I cannot think so meanly of you as to doubt your honour in this business. But you are doing mischief; you are turning this silly girl's head. It is no kindness to lend her books; it is no kindness to invite her to Mordred, and to show her brief glimpses of a life that never can be hers. If you want to do a good deed, and to elevate her life out of its present dead level, make her your almoner, and give her a hundred a year to distribute among her husband's poor patients. The weak unhappy child is perishing for want of some duty to perform upon this earth; some necessary task to keep her busy from day to day, and to make a link between her husband and herself. Roland, I do believe that you are as good and generous-minded a fellow as ever an old bachelor was proud of. My dear boy, let me feel prouder of you than I have ever felt yet. Leave Midlandshire to-morrow morning. It will be easy to invent some excuse for going. Go to-morrow, Roland."
"I will," answered Mr. Lansdell, after a brief pause; "I will go, Raymond," he repeated, holding out his hand, and clasping that of his friend. "I suppose I have been going a little astray lately; but I only wanted the voice of a true-hearted fellow like you to call me back to the straight road. I shall leave Midlandshire to-morrow, Raymond; and it may be a very long time before you see me back again."
"Heaven knows I am sorry enough to lose you, my boy," Mr. Raymond said with some emotion; "but I feel that it's the only thing for you to do. I used sometimes to think, before George Gilbert offered to marry Isabel, that you and she would have been suited to each other somehow; and I have wished that—"
And here Mr. Raymond stopped abruptly, feeling that this speech was scarcely the wisest he could have made.
But Roland Lansdell took no notice of that unlucky observation.
"I shall go to-morrow," he repeated. "I'm very glad you've spoken to me, Raymond; I thank you most heartily for the advice you have given me this night; and I shall go to-morrow."
And then his mind wandered away to his boyish studies in mythical Roman history; and he wondered how Marcus Curtius felt just after making up his mind to take the leap that made him famous. And then, with a sudden slip from ancient to modern history, he thought of poor tender-hearted Louise la Vallière running away and hiding herself in a convent, only to have her pure thoughts and aspirations scattered like a cluster of frail wood-anemones in a storm of wind—only to have her holy resolutions trampled upon by the ruthless foot of an impetuous young king.