Marriage, he thought, with a young man's confidence, would be the "settling down" of body and mind. He held that curious faith in established institutions which is the mainspring of British orthodoxy.
A duet of words intoned in a Church was to conquer his temperament from that moment until death. Faithful, he swore, he would be to her, by these holy vows, publicly pledged; and, the miracle accomplished, his hot blood should turn into the quiet circulation of a saint.
Love should work the charm and passion complete it. He thrust far from him its shadow, satiety; and that still greater pitfall for those who wed in haste, a dissimilarity in habit and thought.
So now as he lay, stretched on the stairs, so near to the fragrance of the girl's golden youth, drinking in the beauty of rounded arms and neck, and the shy, tender curve of her childish mouth, he felt that life held no deeper desire than to know her his until Death should part.
"Peter ... I don't think we ought to be here." This wise remark came a trifle late. For the faint smile with which she mitigated her sentence revealed for a second her white even teeth, and the parted lips and famous dimple completed the strain on McTaggart's control.
"Don't you, my darling?" His face was close to hers, his blue eyes, dilated, pleaded for him.
"Peter ... no!" She stiffened in his arms—then, with a little sigh, her lips met his, and clung...
"Well!—I'll be damned!" A harsh angry voice tore them apart, startled and bewildered.
Ebenezer Cadell, with apoplectic face, was glaring from below at the absorbed pair. The next moment heavy feet shook the stairs; the old man was on them—a fiery retribution.
He caught McTaggart roughly by the shoulder. "What the devil..." he stuttered—"is the meaning of this?"