There was one sure way out of all his danger and difficulties, if he had only been a single man: there was Maud.
If, when Sir Alexander died, he were a bachelor, he might marry Maud. She knew nothing of the world, and he knew she liked him. There would be no need for his ruin if he were only a bachelor.
It was beyond the power of Fate to make him a bachelor; but suppose Fate should take away that unloved wife, that great danger to his name, that great stumbling-block in the way of his successful progress?
Then? What then? Answer: He should marry Maud, and so wipe out the history of his crime.
Would chance or accident, would Heaven or Hell, or whatever else he might call it, take away from him this woman who was a curse and burden, and give him that woman who would bring him deliverance?
Such thoughts had long haunted his mind before he had heard on that 17th of August the voices which assailed and tempted him in tremendous tones; that day on which the fate of the steamboat Rodwell and of Beatrice his wife, of the Weird Sisters and the Towers of Silence, became sealed together for ever.
CHAPTER IX.
A FLASK OF COGNAC.
When the Weeslade Valley Bank declined to advance five thousand pounds on the Weeslade Steamship Company's river passenger-boat the Rodwell, they had two reasons for the refusal: first, they were not prepared to lock up money at the time; second, a report reached them that the Rodwell was in bad condition.