“Should you not—I beg your pardon, Averil—be the happier for a settled home? You might form ties. I think a roving life must be the least desirable one of all.”
“It is one I was never fitted for. My inclination would lead me to home, to domestic happiness. But, as you know, I put that out of my power.”
“For a time. But that is over. You might marry again.”
“I do not suppose I ever shall,” returned Lord Averil, feeling half prompted to tell his unsuspicious friend that his own sister was the barrier to his doing so. “You have never married,” he resumed, allowing the impulse to die away.
Thomas Godolphin shook his head. “The cases are different,” he said. “In your wife you lost one whom you could not regret——”
“Don’t call her by that name, Godolphin!” burst forth Lord Averil.
“And in Ethel I lost one who was all the world to me; who could never be replaced,” Thomas went on, after a pause. “The cases are widely different.”
“Ay, widely different,” assented Lord Averil.
They walked on in silence, each buried in his own thoughts. At the commencement of the road, Lord Averil stopped and took Thomas Godolphin’s hand in his.
“You shall not come any farther with me.”