“You have lost ever so many amusing stories,” she said to Sophy. “Your banjoist is the most entertaining person I have met this season, Mr. Sefton, and he has made us all oblivious of time. I have just discovered that it is ever so much past six.”
“‘Ever so much’ meaning a quarter of an hour,” retorted Sefton, laughing.
He dropped a fold of the brocade drapery as Eve drew near, and the portrait was hidden before her face appeared in the curtained arch.
He looked at her, trying to recall his feelings of a time gone by, when he had been—or had fancied himself—in love with her. Oh, what a weak, hesitating love that had been, as measured against his devotion to this scum of the lagunes—this gutter-bred minx who had scorned him!
“A preposterous minx!” he repeated to himself by-and-by, when he was alone. “I thank thee, child, for teaching me that word. Well, I have sown the wind; I wonder whether I shall have a prosperous harvest, and reap the whirlwind?”
CHAPTER XXVII.
“THOU MAYST BE FALSE AND YET I KNOW IT NOT.”
Before addressing his confidences to Sophy Marchant, Mr. Sefton had assured himself that she did not belong to that exceptional order of womankind who, in honour and discretion, are on a level with wise and honourable men. He had known the young lady quite long enough to know that, although sharp and clever, she was shallow-brained, impulsive, and emotional. He was very sure that with every desire to spare her sister pain she would end by telling Eve of her husband’s infidelity. The secret would be kept for some days, perhaps, or even for some weeks; but it would be as a consuming fire, and would ultimately burst into flame—a flame that would devastate his rival’s home.
The more scathing that whirlwind which was to come from the wind of his sowing, the happier the result for Sefton. It was in vain that Lisa had denied her son’s paternity. In Sefton’s mind there was no shadow of doubt that Vansittart had been, and even now was her lover—and it was for love of Vansittart that his, Sefton’s, honourable attachment had been scorned by her. King Cophetua had offered himself to the beggar-maid, and the beggar-maid had refused him. Was that a humiliation for a man to forgive? Was that a disappointment to go unavenged? All the latent malignity of Sefton’s nature was aroused into active life by that fierce passion of jealousy.
He had not misinterpreted Sophy’s character. She was very silent during the homeward drive with her sister, lolling back in the victoria, looking vacantly at the carriages and the people as they passed.