“How am I to thank you?” were the first words spoken by Thomas—in reference to the clemency shown to his brother, as promised that day to Maria.
“Hush!” said Lord Averil. “My dear friend, you are allowing these things to affect you more than they ought. I see the greatest change in you, even in this short time.”
The rays of the declining sun were falling on the face of Thomas Godolphin, lighting up its fading vitality. The cheeks were thinner, the weak hair seemed scantier, the truthful grey eyes had acquired an habitual expression of pain. Lord Averil leaned over him and noted it all.
“Sit down,” said Thomas, drawing a chair nearer to him.
Lord Averil accepted the invitation, but did not release the hand. “I understand you have been doubting me,” he said. “You might have known me better. We have been friends a long time.”
Thomas Godolphin only answered by a pressure of the hand he held. Old and familiar friends though they were, understanding each other’s hearts almost, as these close friends should do, it was yet a most painful point to Thomas Godolphin. On the one side there was his brother’s crime: on the other there was the loss of that large sum to Lord Averil. Thomas had to do perpetual battle with pain now: but there were moments when the conflict was nearer and sharper than at others. This was one of them.
They subsided into conversation: its theme, as was natural, the bankruptcy and its attendant details. Lord Averil found that Thomas was blaming himself.
“Why should you?” he asked impulsively. “Is it not enough that the world should do so, without yourself indorsing it?”
A faint smile crossed Thomas Godolphin’s face at the thoughtless admission spoken so openly: but he knew, none better, how great a share of blame was dealt out to him. “It is due,” he observed to Lord Averil. “I ought not to have reposed trust so implicit in George. Things could not have come to this pass if I had not done so.”
“If we cannot place implicit trust in a brother, in whom can we place it?”