“I have.”
“Before you tell me anything, I want to know if I may, without giving you offence, speak to you as your sister if she were here might, and would?”
“If one of my sisters were speaking to me now,” he replied, “she would not, I am very sure, find much to say that was pleasant. They have built their hopes on me, and now—but go on, Miss Moffat, say anything you like, no matter how true it may be, I will try to bear it.”
“You mistake me a little, I think,” she said; “all I meant was that if a sister found her brother in a sore strait as you are now, she would speak to him with no more reserve than I am about to do. Ever since I knew of this matter I have been thinking how it will be best for you to get away; what it will be best for you to do when you have got away. I suppose I am right in imagining you might find a difficulty in finding the means at once for a long journey.”
“I have done very well at Kingslough,” he replied, “and if I could only sell my practice, and I had an offer for it not long since, I should have no difficulty in going to the uttermost ends of the earth.”
“Yes, but by the time you had sold your practice it might be too late. If you can get any friend to take your place while you go away apparently for a holiday, you had better leave everything just as it is at this moment. Woman’s wit is quick, Mr. Hanlon, if it be not very profound, and my wit tells me every hour you lose in quitting Kingslough may prove nearer—nearer—that which we all want to avert. I have very little money here, but I can send you a letter which will enable you to get all you may require. You are not offended I hope?” she went on hurriedly; “I know you cannot escape without sufficient money to do so, and it will be the happiest day of my life when I hear you have got safely out of the country.”
All the manhood which was in him rebelled against having to accept such help as this; and for a moment he bared his head and let the cool night wind play upon his temples to relieve the pain which seemed tearing his brain to pieces. Never had Theophilus Hanlon seemed such a poor creature to himself before; no,—not even when he fled from the side of the man he had murdered; never had he been thoroughly humbled in his own estimation previously. If she had loved him; if he could only for one moment have flattered himself she cared for him more than for the most ordinary acquaintance, the stab might not have pierced so deep.
As it was, he felt the wound was bleeding internally, and that it would continue to bleed at intervals throughout all the years to come.
“I have offended you,” she said. “Pardon my want of tact. I did not mean to hurt your feelings.”
“Hurt my feelings!” he repeated; in the interval during which he remained silent he had tested the truth of each word she said, and admitted, reluctantly it might be, but still certainly, that without such help as she offered, liberty and he might shake hands and part for ever. “Hurt my feelings! When a man has done what I have done, when he has failed to do what I have failed to do, he may reasonably be supposed to have no feelings left to hurt. And yet, Miss Moffat,” he went on, “I will be frank with you; just for a moment your offer cut me. It is so hard—oh! my God,” he broke out in a passion of agony, “what had I ever done that such a trouble should come upon me!”