He had not flinched when he came unexpectedly on Lady Newhaven. At the sight of her a sudden passion of anger shot up and enveloped him as in one flame from head to foot. His love for Rachel was a weapon, and he used it. He did not greatly care about his own good name, but the good name of the man whom Rachel loved was a thing to fight for. It was for her sake, not Lady Newhaven's, that he had concocted the story of the mistaken rooms. He should not have had the presence of mind if Rachel had not been concerned.
He had not finished with Lady Newhaven. He should have trouble yet with her, hideous scenes, in which the corpse of his dead lust would be dragged up, a thing to shudder at, out of its nettly grave.
He could bear it. He must bear it. Nothing would induce him to marry Lady Newhaven, as she evidently expected. He set his teeth. "She will know the day after to-morrow," he said to himself, "when she sees my engagement to Rachel in the papers. Then she will get at me somehow, and make my life a hell to me, while she can. And she will try and come between me and Rachel. I deserve it. I deserve anything I get. But Rachel knows, and will stick to me. I will go down to her to-morrow. I can't go on without seeing her. And she won't mind, as the engagement will be given out next day."
He became more composed at the thought of Rachel. But presently his lip quivered. It would be all right in the end. But, oh! not to have done it! Not to have done it! To have come to his marriage with a whiter past, not to need her forgiveness on the very threshold of their life together, not to have been unfaithful to her before he knew her.
What man who has disbelieved in his youth in the sanctity of Love, and then later has knelt in its Holy of Holies, has escaped that pang?
CHAPTER XLVI
There's neither honesty, manhood, nor good-fellowship in thee.—SHAKESPEARE
"My mind misgives me, Dick!" said the Bishop, a day or two later, as Dick joined him and his sister and Rachel at luncheon at the Palace. "I am convinced that you have been up to some mischief."
"I have just returned from Warpington, my lord. I understood it was your wish I should ride over and tell them Hester was better."