"Excellent advice, but useless to me. I can not forget!"
"Is it possible that on so short an acquaintance you were so severely hit?"
"Ay, in the first twenty-four hours of our acquaintance she touched my heart as no other woman ever did, and every subsequent interview added to her power. There was a sweet gravity about her which would be as charming in her white-haired age as in her fair youth! And yet so miserably faithless is this human nature of ours, there are moments when doubt plunges its jagged darts into me;—and for a hideous moment I think it possible she may have gone willingly with some unknown lover, but at any suggestion of the kind from another the doubt vanishes. It only gathers at rare intervals when I brood alone and grow morbid. In my saner moments I never doubt her; but the horror of the thing!—nothing diminishes that!"
He started up and began to pace the room. The anguish of his voice touched Lady Gethin, in spite of her conviction that he was weakly credulous.
"It is a terrible business altogether. What do you think of doing now?"
"I shall go down by an early train to Cheltenham to-morrow and see this Mrs. Storrer. My future movements will depend on what I gather from her."
"Shall you write to the father?"
"Not unless I have something definite to report. It would be cruel to rouse him out of his apathy by a gleam of false hope."
"You are a most unlucky fellow, Hugh; your life is quite spoilt by this entanglement."
"It is my fate," said Glynn. He rested his elbow on the mantelpiece and his head on his hand.