“Prepare me!” sharply interrupted Roger, his nerves all awry. “Do you think I am a girl? Don’t I live always in too much mental excruciation to need preparation for any mortal ill?”
“Well, Lizzie’s down here.”
In spite of his boast, he turned as white as the counterpane on his bed. I sat down and told him all. His hair grew damp as he listened, his face took the hue of despair.
“Heaven help me!” he gasped.
“I suppose you did not know Harriet was her sister?”
“How was I to know it? Be you very sure Lizzie would not voluntarily proclaim to me that she had a sister in service. What wretched luck! Oh, Johnny, what is to be done?”
“Nothing—that I see. It will be sure to come out over their tea to-morrow. Harriet will say ‘Mr. Roger’s down here on a visit, and has brought Mr. Johnny Ludlow with him’—just as a little item of gossip. And then—why, then, Lizzie will make but one step of it into the family circle, and say ‘Roger is my husband.’ It is of no use to mince the matter, Bevere,” I added, in answer to a groan of pain; “better look the worst in the face.”
The worst was a very hopeless worst. Even if we could find out where she was staying in Brighton, and he or I went to her to try to stop her coming, it would not avail; she would come all the more.
“You don’t know her depth,” groaned Roger. “She’d put two and two together, and jump to the right conclusion—that it is my home. No, there’s nothing that can be done, nothing; events must take their course. Johnny,” he passionately added, “I’d rather die than face the shame.”