(“You see, Raymond,” he has since explained to me, “there was more than mere chance in my unaccountable decision to explore that passage. Fate, my boy—fate!”)
He took the gloved hand which she offered with a pretty embarrassment, and bent over it in his unique, courtier fashion.
“I have never met your husband, Lady Dillon. But his late father, Sir John, was one of my dearest friends. I regard you, now, as that dear friend’s daughter, and since Fate has brought us both here to-night, I regard your interests as a sacred charge. You are in trouble. How can I serve you?”
—————
II.
AT THE STAGE DOOR.
I doubt if London could furnish another man—a father confessor excepted—who, in so brief a time, could have learnt from the young Lady Dillon so much of her history as did O’Hagan. Side by side, they paced up and down a comparatively quiet street dipping riverward, and the girl (for she was no more) confided in this man, whom, twenty minutes earlier, she had not known.
Does not that argue eloquently for my friend? Does it not make amends for much that seems harsh in his nature? For although, alas! women often are deceived in men, a woman’s instincts can never err in such case as this; a true woman, as this one, never pours out the trouble with which her heart is bursting, to a knave—to a blackguard. I defy you to confute me. Be it remembered that, by a trick of Fate—or shall we say Providence?—these two had friends in common. Nor be it forgot that, for fifty miles north, south, east and west of Dunnamore, “the honour of an O’Hagan” is a form of oath. But, nevertheless, I maintain that there is something grandly and expansively human—something splendid and true—in the nature of a man whom at such brief acquaintance a good woman knows to be worthy of her confidence. Don’t you agree with me?
“Of course I remember your wedding!” said O’Hagan. “Bless my soul! you were a Miss Sheila Cavanagh! As a child you must have been at Dunnamore many a time! Why! we are quite old friends! You are not married three months, yet?”
“Ten weeks,” replied Lady Dillon, pathetically.
“And simply because your husband, Sir Brian, saw you walking in St. James’s Park with a gentleman——”