"Do you mean that my cousin is a dishonourable man?" asked Dora indignantly.
"No, dear. I mean that he is a man who has spoiled one career for himself, and will have to work uncommonly hard in order to find another."
This was cruel logic to Dora's ear. For the first time in her life she thought that her husband was ungenerous; and for the first time in her life she reckoned her own fortune as an element of power. Hitherto she had allowed her rents to be paid into her husband's bank. She had her own cheque-book, and drew whatever money she wanted; but she never looked at her pass-book, and she did not even ask what income each year brought her, or what surplus was left at the end of the year. She had never offered to help Bothwell with money; she had felt that any such offer would humiliate him. But now she considered for the first time that her money must have accumulated to a considerable extent, and that it was in her power to assist Bothwell with capital for any enterprise which he might desire to undertake. If he had set his heart upon going to the South Sea Islands, he should not start with an empty purse.
The train from Paddington came into Bodmin Road station with laudable punctuality, and without mischance of any kind; and the dog-cart brought Mr. Distin to Penmorval before half-past eight. Dora was in the drawing-room when he arrived. She had dressed early in order to be ready to welcome her husband's friend; even albeit he came to her with a perfume of the Old Bailey.
In spite of Wyllard's praise of his old schoolfellow, Dora had expected a foxy and unpleasant individual, with craft in every feature of his face.
She was agreeably surprised on beholding a good-looking man, with aquiline nose, dark eyes, hair and whiskers inclining to gray, slim, well set up, neat without being dapper or priggish—a man who might have been taken for an artist or an author, just as readily as for a lawyer versed in the dark ways of crime.
"My friend Wyllard looks all the better for his rural seclusion," said Distin, after he had been introduced to Dora. "He seems to me a younger man by ten years than he was when I met him in Paris just ten years ago. And that means twenty years to the good, you see."
"Is it really ten years since you have met?" exclaimed Dora.
"Exactly a decade. Our last meeting was a chance encounter in the Palais Royal in the summer of '72, when Paris was just beginning to recover herself after the horrors of the Commune. We ran against each other one day at dinner-time—both making for Véfour's, where we dined together and talked over old times. I thought that evening my friend looked aged and haggard, nervous and worried, and I put it down to the ruling disease of our epoch, high-pressure. I knew it could not be the effect of late hours or dissipation of any kind, for Wyllard was always as steady as old Time. But now I find him regenerated, glorified by rustic pleasures. Happy fellow, who can afford to enjoy his otium cum dignitate in the very prime of life."