“Thanks,” said Edgar, faintly; “it has to do with some—very dear friends of mine. I could scarcely feel it more deeply if it concerned myself.”
“It is a disgrace to civilization!” cried the lawyer—“it is a subversion of every honest principle. You young men ought to take warning—”
“—To do a villainy of this kind, when we mean to do it, out of Scotland?” said Edgar, “or we may find ourselves the victims instead of the victors? Heaven forbid that I should do anything to save a scoundrel from his just deserts!”
“But I thought you were interested—deeply interested——”
“Not for him, the cowardly blackguard!” cried Edgar, excited beyond self-control.
He turned away from the place, holding the lawyer’s opinion, for which he had spent a large part of his little remaining stock of money, clutched in his hand. A feverish, momentary sense, almost of gratification, that Arden should have been thus punished, possessed him—only for a moment. He hastened to the club, where he could sit quiet and think it over. He had not been able even to consider his own business, but had thrust his letters into his pocket without looking at them.
When he found himself alone, or almost alone, in a corner of the library, he covered his face with his hands, and yielded to the crushing influence of this last certainty. Clare was no longer an honoured matron, the possessor of a well-recognized position, the mother of children of whom she was proud, the wife of a man whom at least she had once loved, and who, presumably, had done nothing to make her hate and scorn him. God help her! What was she now? What was her position to be? She had no relations to fall back upon, or to stand by her in her trouble, except himself, who was no relation—only poor Edgar, her loving brother, bound to her by everything but blood; but, alas! he knew that in such emergencies blood is everything, and other ties count for so little. The thought made his heart sick; and he could not be silent, could not hide it from her, dared not shut up this secret in his own mind, as he might have done almost anything else that affected her painfully. There was but one way, but one step before him now.
His letters tumbled out of his pocket as he drew out Miss Lockwood’s original paper, and he tried to look at them, by way of giving his overworn mind a pause, and that he might be the better able to choose the best way of carrying out the duty now before him. These letters were—some of them, at least—answers to those which he had written in the excitement and happy tumult of his mind, after Lady Mary’s unintentional revelation. He read them as through a mist; their very meaning came dimly upon him, and he could with difficulty realize the state of his feelings when, all glowing with the prospect of personal happiness, and the profound and tender exultation with which he found himself to be still beloved, he had written these confident appeals to the kindness of his friends. Most likely, had he read the replies with a disengaged mind, they would have disappointed him bitterly, with a dreariness of downfall proportioned to his warmth of hope. But in his present state of mind every sound around him was muffled, every blow softened. One nail strikes out another, say the astute Italians. The mind is not capable of two profound and passionate preoccupations at once. He read them with subdued consciousness, with a veil before his eyes. They were all friendly, and some were warmly cordial. “What can we do for you?” they all said. “If you could take a mastership, I have interest at more than one public school; but, alas! I suppose you did not even take your degree in England,” one wrote to him. “If you knew anything about land, or had been trained to the law,” said another, “I might have got you a land agency in Ireland, a capital thing for a man of energy and courage; but then I fear you are no lawyer, and not much of an agriculturist.” “What can you do, my dear fellow?” said a third, more cautiously. “Think what you are most fit for—you must know best yourself—and let me know, and I will try all I can do.”
Edgar laughed as he bundled them all back into his pocket. What was he most fit for? To be an amateur detective, and find out secrets that broke his heart. A dull ache for his own disappointment (though his mind was not lively enough to feel disappointed) seemed to add to the general despondency, the lowered life and oppressed heart of which he had been conscious without this. But then what had he to do with personal comfort or happiness? In the first place there lay this tremendous passage before him—this revelation to be made to Clare.
It was late in the afternoon before he could nerve himself to write the indispensable letter, from which he felt it was cowardly to shrink. It was not a model of composition, though it gave him a great deal of trouble. This is what he said:—