CHAPTER XXIV
After Kitty had left Francis Eversleigh she would have preferred to retire to the seclusion of her bedroom, but she knew that if she did so it would cause surprise to her friends and lead them to guess something was amiss. Anxious to spare them, she forced herself to join them in the drawing-room, and sat for an hour, taking her part in the general talk. Then, saying she was rather tired, she withdrew.
Between the making of a heroic resolve likely to cost the maker dear, and the carrying out heroically of all the resolve entails, there is, unless resolve and deed go swift together, room for many changes of feeling not unlike the rising and the falling of waves. Within Kitty's breast the waves rose and fell that night, now bearing her aloft so that the sacrifice of herself seemed easy, now burying her in depths which made it appear impossible.
She did not really waver in her determination; her mind was made up to save the Eversleighs from the calamity which threatened them. What troubled her most was the way in which she should communicate her decision to Gilbert. She knew that he loved her with all the strength and passion of a strong nature, and he knew that she loved him. And now she must tell him that she was not going to marry him, but Bennet, the very man, in fact, against whom she had warned her lover, and whom, she was well aware, he detested. How was she to break the news to him? How tell him so that he would understand her decision was irrevocable?
For one thing, he must not know why she was breaking off their engagement. Francis Eversleigh had assured her that Gilbert was unconscious of Silwood's frauds; indeed, she had not required any such assurance. And she was determined that he should not know from her. She saw, then, that she could give him no explanation. She must just tell him bluntly she had changed her mind. But, in that case, what would he think of her? what must he think of her? And that she should choose Bennet of all men! Gilbert could not but misunderstand her. He must think her deceit itself.
It was this thought, more than any other, that sunk her deep in gulfs of despair.
And then she told herself that this, too—this renunciation of the good opinion of her lover, this misunderstanding she must subject herself to—was part of the price she had agreed to pay to save him and his father from ruin. "And Gilbert," she said in her heart, "will never know what I have done for him. He will deem me fickle, false, base, a cheat and a lie!"
And then a sort of rage came upon her, and she asked why this fate had been thrust upon her; what had she done to be made the victim of such outrageous fortune?
"Why should I suffer thus cruelly?" she cried rebelliously. "Is there no escape?"
She thought of what she had said to Francis Eversleigh—how she would gladly give up her wealth to Bennet if that would satisfy him. And now she remembered that the whole of her fortune was not lost, for there was still a considerable portion of it in Canada. Could she not make a bargain with Bennet? She resolved to try, but she did not believe she would succeed.