He had never been less enamoured of solitude and of his own society; nevertheless, he told himself that any amount of isolation would be preferable to the penalty of hearing Geraldine discuss the matter. He could hear in imagination her clear sensible premises and sound, logical conclusion, annotated by womanly lamentations over such a family disaster. The probable opinions of Mrs. Bryce and Mrs. Charrington would be cited and commented on, and, in spite of her very real sympathy with her sister, Michael shrewdly surmised that the knowledge that the Blake influence was waning would give her a large amount of comfort in the future.
When Crauford announced that the ladies were having tea in the drawing-room, he begged that a cup might be sent up to him.
'Will you tell Mrs. Harcourt that I have a headache?' he said; and, as Crauford delivered the message, Geraldine looked meaningly at her mother.
'I expect Michael has taken all this to heart,' she said, as soon as Crauford had left the room; 'he is very feeling, and then he is so fond of Audrey.' And as Mrs. Ross sighed in assent, she went on with the topic that was engrossing them at that moment—how Audrey was to be induced to leave home for a while.
Michael's table was strewn with books, and one lay open on his knee, but he had not once turned the page. How was he to read when the very atmosphere seemed charged with heaviness and oppression?
'She thinks that she loves him, and therefore she will suffer,' he said to himself over and over again; 'and it will be for the first time in her life; for she has often told me that she has never known trouble. But her suffering will be like a grain of sand in comparison with his. Oh, I know what he is feeling now! To have had her, and then to have lost her! Poor fellow! it is a cruel fate.'
Michael pondered drearily over the future that lay before them all. How was he to bear himself, he wondered, under circumstances so exasperating? She was free, and he knew her to be free—for Cyril would never claim her—and yet she would regard herself as altogether bound.
He must go away, he thought; not at once—not while she needed him—but by and by, when things were a little better. Life at Rutherford was no longer endurable to him; for months past, ever since her engagement, he had chafed under a sense of insupportable restlessness. A sort of fever oppressed him—a longing to be free from the influence that dominated him.
'If I stay here I must tell her how it is with me, and that will only make her more miserable,' he thought. 'She is not like other women—I never saw one like her. There is something unreasonable in her generosity. Girls sometimes say things they do not mean, and then repent of their impulsiveness; but she will never repent, whether she loves him or not. She believes that it is her mission to comfort him. Perhaps, if I had appealed to her, I might have made her believe that she had a different mission. Oh, my dear, if it only could have been so!'
And he sighed in the bitterness of his spirit; for he knew that in his unselfishness he had never wooed her.