"I should hope so! I cannot bear to think of your having known him well under any circumstances. The man is low! Whether drunk or sober he has nothing to commend him, and I believe him to be utterly irreclaimable and lost."
"In this world perhaps. But not necessarily in the next? Do you decline, then, to continue the work of reformation?"
He winced, and upon recalling what he had said saw his error. "No, I retract that. He is human, therefore a soul to be saved, as one of God's creatures, but whether the man can be reinstated in society is a doubtful matter. You are right to defend him, and I am sad only when I grudge you those memories of him. You knew him then so very well?"
She understood the pleading tone and she endeavoured to be candid, but how explain certain things to a man of Ringfield's calibre? To another, a glance, a smile, the inflection of a word, of a syllable, and all would be clear. How was she to frame an explanation which should receive his tacit and grave but unenlightened approval? How far he could conjecture, disassociate, dissect, limit and analyse, weigh and deduct, the various progresses in a crude amalgamation people call Love, she did not know, and there lay her difficulty.
"I will tell you what I can. I was quite young when I met Mr. Hawtree, 'Crabbe,' as he is now known. It is his second name. He had been unfortunate in money affairs, I understood, and had not been trained to any kind of work. It was after I returned from Sorel that I found him here. He frequently came to visit Henry; they described themselves as gentlemen together, and I suppose they were not wise company for one another, but at first I did not take any notice. He fell in love with me, and talked a great deal to me, improving my English as he called it, and you can understand how little opportunity I had had of reading or continuing my studies. I have no talent for the ménage; besides, Henry's methods had been long in practice, and I could not unchange them, at the age of nineteen! Mr. Hawtree and I were thus thrown very much together, yet one thing kept occurring which made me very miserable. I found out that he was drinking, and Henry too! Then another thing—my bad temper. Ah! how I suffered, suffered, in those days with that man, Mr. Ringfield!"
"I can well believe it."
"And he with me! Perhaps some other kind of woman would have suited him better, a timid, angelic, gentle little being who would have appealed to him more. When we quarrelled he grew like all you English, haughty and sneering—ah! when I think of it! And I changed to a fury—the Clairville temper—and gave back even more, even worse, than I got. But do not let us talk any more about it! You have discovered what I would have hidden, and for my part I get on better when I make myself forget it and him altogether."
He was silent; new and conflicting ideas clashed in his brain, while very close to him in the warm, fragrant night sat this alluring, sorely tried and lonely creature, who soon found the silence insupportable. To keep talking was safe; to be long silent impossible, since they seemed to draw nearer and nearer with every moment, and soon it would either be Ringfield's hand upon that dark lock he perceived adorning her white neck, or her head with its crown of hair stealing tenderly towards his shoulder. From such a precipitation of events they were saved by timely recollection of their position and the sounds which reached them from the road. The boat was leaving again, and they knew they had been thus together for an hour. Ringfield rose.
"There is now only the man himself to be seen and made to understand that such stories about you must cease. I shall speak to him at once, to-night perhaps, certainly to-morrow."
At this she quailed and could not control herself; she laid her hands on his arm and all the delicate art of the actress was called upon to assist her pleading.