"Thank heaven that's the end of this ridiculous connection!" he said to himself as he dropped the letter into a pillar-box in front of the club. "My mind is now easy, and I can enjoy myself. I can play to-night as though I were still a bachelor with no thought of the morrow. Ah, but I have thought of the morrow! What delightful thought, too! delightful Hetty."
It was late in the evening when this letter was delivered at Singleton Terrace. Nothing else came by that post. Although Mrs. Crawford had often seen her husband's writing, this was the first letter she had got from him, and she had never before seen her name and the address of that house in his writing. She did not recognise the hand, and thinking the letter must be connected with routine business about the Welford property, she put it on the table by her bedside unopened. He attended to all such matters.
When the maid brought in her supper she took up the letter again and turned it over idly in her hands. All at once it struck her that the writing was familiar, but whose it was she could not guess.
With a smile at her own curiosity, she broke the cover and drew out the sheet of paper.
She looked at the signature languidly until she read it. Then hastily, tremulously she scanned the first few lines. When she gathered their import she uttered a low wailing sob and fell back insensible on the pillow.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
[WILLIAM CRAWFORD FREE.]
When William Crawford had posted his letter to his wife he felt ten years younger than an hour before. He enjoyed an extraordinary accession of spirits. The day had grown heavy and cloudy, but to him it was brighter than the flawless blue of Mediterranean summer. Richmond and Singleton Terrace were done with for good and all. There were to be no more private theatricals played for board and lodgings. Instead of simulating love for an elderly woman, he was at liberty to make real love to the most charming young girl he had ever met. His notions of right and wrong were clear and simple: what he liked was right, what he did not like was wrong. Since he had come to man's estate he had acted upon the code, and it never once occurred to him to question it. He did not object to other men being pious or just or modest; he did not object to their even preaching a little to him about the merit of these or any other virtues. All he asked was to be let go his own gait unmolested.
He was now at liberty to take what path he chose and adopt what sport pleased his humour. He had played for a small fortune and won. He felt proud of his success, and sorry that the nature of it forbade him glorying in it. He was aware that the most disreputable and unprincipled blackleg in the Counter Club would scorn to get money as he had acquired his. But this did not matter to him. He was not going to tell any one at the club how he came by the money; that was an irksome self-restraint imposed upon himself out of deference to ridiculous conventional ideas. But he had the money in his pocket--that was the great thing.
As he intended playing all through the night, if the game were kept up, it was too early to begin at three o'clock in the afternoon. He should be fagged out before morning if he sat down now. He was neither so young nor so impetuous that he could not discipline desire to delay.