"He has rather liberal ideas on the subject of the whole duty of man."
"I should rather think he has."
And Kate went off at score. I could see from what she said that my friend the gentleman was all my fancy painted him. When she gave me an opening, I slipped another word in edgeways.
"Is he received in respectable society?"
"That depends, my dearest child, upon what you call respectable society. He's the boon companion of dukes, marquises, and earls, and that kind of thing. He visits the best houses and the best people. But I was raised at Salem, Mass., and our ideas of respectable society were perhaps our own. I haven't found that they obtain to any considerable extent round here."
It was scandalously late when I left for home.
The same thing occupied my thoughts in the cab as on the night before--my friend the gentleman. Whatever could have made him do the thing which he had done? That is, if Kate's Reginald Townsend was mine--of which, by the way, I had no doubt. A man may be all that's bad; he may be worse than a murderer, but he takes particularly good care not, if he can help it, to be the thing itself. What could it be which, in the judgment of a man in his position, had compelled him to place himself within the shadow of the gallows?
The problem occupied my mind. The man had been placed by nature in such a fortunate position. It appeared that he had so much to lose--and he had lost it all! What for? I wondered. What was it which had constrained him to choose between the devil and the deep sea--and then to choose the devil?
As I thought of it, and how handsome he was, and how well bred, and how there was everything to please a woman's taste, and to gratify her eye, a wild notion germinated in my brain--which was watered by circumstances, and grew.
I dismissed the cab at the end of my road. The night, though dark, was fine. The horse was tired. I had no objection to saving the creature's legs by walking the rest of the way. I did not suppose that, at that hour of the night, or, rather, of the morning, there would be any one about.