His eyes were red and bloodshot, his appearance neglected and wild. He looked as if he had not slept, nor even undressed, all night.
“Look here,” he said hoarsely, “I have got another letter, saying she would accept money—a compromise. Will you persuade Clare to stay, and make no exposure, and hush it all up, for the sake of the children—if we have her solemnly bound over to keep the secret and get her sent away? Will you? What harm could it do you? And it might be the saving of the boy.”
“Arden, I pity you from my heart!” said Edgar; “but I could not give such advice to Clare.”
“It’s for the boy,” cried Arden. “Look here. We’ve never been friends, you and I, and it’s not natural we should be; but that child shall be brought up to think more of you than of any man on earth—to think of you as his friend, his—well, his uncle, if you will. Grant that I’m done for in this world, and poor Clare too, poor girl; but, Edgar, if you liked, you might save the boy.”
“By falsehood,” said Edgar, his heart wrung with sympathetic emotion—“by falsehood, as I was myself set up, till the time came, and I fell. Better, surely, that he should be trained to bear the worst. You would not choose for him such a fate as mine?”
“It has not done you any harm,” said Arden, looking keenly at the man he had dispossessed—from whom he had taken everything. “You have always had the best of it!” he cried, with sudden fire. “You have come out of it all with honour, while everyone else has had a poor enough part to play. But in this case,” he added, anxiously, in a tone of conciliation, “nothing of the kind can happen. Who like her son and mine could have the right here—every right of nature, if not the legal right? And I declare to you, before God, that I never meant it. I never intended to marry—that woman.”
“You intended only to betray her.” It was on Edgar’s lips to say these words, but he had not the heart to aggravate the misery which the unhappy man was already suffering. They went on together to the house, Arden repeating at intervals his entreaties, to which Edgar could give but little answer. He knew very well Clare would listen to no such proposal; but so strangely did the pity within him mingle with all less gentle sentiments, that Edgar’s friendly lips could not utter a harsh word. He said what he could, rather, to soothe; for, after all, his decision was of little importance, and Clare did not take the matter so lightly as to make a compromise a possible thing to think of.
The house had already acquired something of that look of agitation which steals so readily into the atmosphere wherever domestic peace is threatened. There were two or three servants in the hall, who disappeared in different directions when the gentlemen were seen approaching; and Edgar soon perceived, by the deference with which he himself was treated, that the instinct of the household had jumped to a conclusion very different from the facts, but so pleasing to the imagination as to be readily received. He had been recognised, and it was evident that he was thought to be “righted,” to have got “his own again.” Arthur Arden was anything but beloved at home, and the popular heart as well as imagination sprang up, eager to greet the return of the real master, the true heir.
“Mrs. Arden, sir, has ordered the carriage to meet the twelve o’clock train. She’s in the morning-room, sir,” said the butler, with solemnity.
He spoke to Arthur, but he looked at Edgar. They were all of one way of thinking; further evidence had been found out, or something had occurred to turn the wheel of fortune, and Edgar had been restored to “his own.”