Captain Jack took it and held it gently for an instant, then released it. He would have liked to lift it to his lips, but he dared not, though his heart was beating rapidly with a sense of coming triumph. The tell-tale expression on the face of that innocent girl appealed to the little of good that was left in his nature. He was now certain that he was not indifferent to Kathleen, and what there was of conscience in the man appealed to him on her behalf. It seemed to say, "What right have you to mar another fair life, by seeking to link it with your sin-soiled, dishonourable career? Look at your past. Think of the young wife whose friends thanked God for the early death that saved her from prolonged sorrow. What can your very love be but injurious to such as Kathleen Mountford? Spare her a future of misery, a fearful awakening from a dream of hope and happiness; for the sake of the one who was the mother of your boy, and whom, after your selfish fashion, you loved."
But the voice of conscience was silenced by louder pleadings going on at the same time within the man's mind. His circumstances were desperate. He had really been in London to stave off law proceedings which would have revealed his hopeless position. He had only succeeded by entering into an agreement whereby the Monk's How estate, his home, and its contents would pass out of his possession fifteen months hence, and he would be penniless and homeless, unless he could in the meanwhile retrieve his fortunes by marriage.
Captain Torrance had made more than one attempt to do this already, but parents and guardians had proved too watchful as regarded those who combined youth with wealth, and his efforts had proved futile. In Kathleen, everything that he could desire was united. Her unencumbered property would be an ample provision for life, Hollingsby Hall, a good house for a ruined man to hang up his hat in. Kathleen's carefully accumulated thousands, which popular rumour numbered at fifty, would redeem Monk's How, if he chose to spend them on it. Besides, what possibilities of future pleasures, which need not be particularized, opened before him, the one condition for securing these being marriage with a girl, young, beautiful, and lovable!
As to Monk's How! Captain Jack had always been sorry to think that it would not go down to Ralph as it had come from his father to himself, but it might yet be saved. Miss Mountford would be her own mistress in a year, or perhaps rather less now, and he had secured an extra three months' breathing-time, in case of difficulties.
"Matheson will take care that Hollingsby is settled on Kathleen, and he would be an idiot indeed if he did not. However, I will not be too hard-hearted. It will be just as much to my advantage as to hers, for I cannot trust myself to take care of money. If I get the ready cash under my control, I may well be contented, and the value of everything will be trebled by the pleasure of cutting out that puritanical fellow. Anybody can guess that he would like to shut out all suitors from Hollingsby Hall."
Thought is rapid, and these arguments, pro and con, none of them new to the mind of Captain Jack, rushed through it during that brief pause with Kathleen at the turnstile. Needless to say which side conquered.
But for the meeting with Captain Torrance, Kathleen would have taken the field-path. She would not now choose this more private road, in case he should turn and walk by her side. People might misjudge her, and imagine that the meeting was not an accidental one, if they were by chance seen together on the less frequented way. So she turned towards the high-road and, as she half feared, half hoped, Captain Torrance took the same.
"I was going this way back," he said, "and now that through your goodness I am forgiven, I trust you will add to it by allowing me to walk with you to the Hall."
Kathleen gave a smiling assent, and the two walked on, talking chiefly about Ralph, and his father's anxiety on his account during his stay in London. The captain waxed pathetic as he bewailed the boy's motherless condition and his own comparative helplessness. He sighed as he added—
"If only one, as good, tender, and fair as my poor Adela, would take her place and be a mother to Ralph, I should care little for myself; but I ought not to speak in this way. Even the thought of Ralph must not make me forget—"