Skelton knew exactly what was coming.
“There is that boy, Lewis Pryor.�
“Miss Shapleigh and I have agreed upon that,� replied Skelton in a tone which put a stop to any further discussion. “If she is satisfied, nobody else can complain.�
“Not even her parents?�
“See here, Mr. Shapleigh, we know each other too well to beat about the bush. You know your daughter will marry me if she says she will. You haven’t just known her yesterday.�
“She will, by the powers of heaven!� burst out Mr. Shapleigh; “and so, I suppose, as you say, it is hardly worth while to talk about it. But, for the sake of the thing, here’s my hand and my consent with it.�
“Thank you,� answered Skelton, with grim politeness, and taking his hat at the same time.
He went back to Deerchase in a sort of exaltation not altogether free from melancholy. He had a feeling that too much of his life was gone—that, like the day’s sun, which had shone so brilliantly before its setting, it was a dying glory. Things were becoming too pleasant to him. The giving up of so much money with so little reluctance seemed too easy to be normal, yet the fact that this charming Sylvia had taken him with such a diminished fortune contained the most intoxicating and subtile flattery. There had been something of this in his first marriage; but although he felt the extreme of tenderness, gratitude, and respect for his first wife, it had been more a marriage of gentle affection than profound passion. Skelton dimly realised what Bulstrode brutally proclaimed—that if somebody had not violently opposed that marriage it might never have taken place. But Sylvia Shapleigh had powerfully attracted him from the first. Skelton had a vein of fatalism about him. Like the old Greeks, he expected to pay a price for everything, and it did not surprise him that in the natural course of events he had to pay a great price for his Sylvia.
It was quite dusk when he stood on the bridge and looked first towards Belfield and then towards Deerchase. The twilight had fallen, and there were yellow lights about. Out in the river a vessel lay with a lantern at her masthead, that glimmered fitfully, showing the dusky outline of her hull against the shadowy mass of shore and sky. Afar off, at the negro quarters, a circle of dark figures sat around an outdoor fire, and a song faintly echoed from them. Skelton tried to distinguish Sylvia’s window from the dark pile of the Belfield house, but could not, and smiled at himself for his folly, and was glad to know such folly. He was no mean philosopher in the actual experiences of life.
“Perhaps,� he said, “now that I shall stop buying books by the thousand, I shall get something done in the way of work; and having assumed duties and claims, I shall not have all my time to myself, and so may be spurred to use it more successfully than I do now—for so runs life.�