Mr. Bonnithorne fumbled his papers nervously, and repeated beneath his breath, "Terrible, terrible!"
"She has wronged me, Bonnithorne, and he has wronged me. They shall marry and they shall separate; and henceforward they shall walk together and yet apart, a gulf dividing them from each other, yet a wider gulf dividing both from the world; and so on until the end, and he and I and she and I are quits."
"Terrible, terrible!" Mr. Bonnithorne mumbled again. "All nature rises against it."
"Is it so? Then be it so," said Hugh, the flame subsiding from his cheek, and a cold smile creeping afresh about his lips. "Your sense of justice would have been answered, perhaps, if I had turned this bastard adrift penniless and a beggar, stopped the marriage, and taken by strategy the woman I could not win by love." The smile faded away. "That would have been better than the cup of vitriol, but not much better. You are a man of the world."
"It is a terrible revenge," the lawyer muttered again—this time with a different intonation.
"I repeat, they shall marry. No more than that," said Hugh. "I would outrage nature as little as I would shock the world."
The sun had crept round to where the organ stood in one corner of the room. Hugh's passion had gradually subsided. He sidled on to the stool and began to play softly. A knock came to the door, and old Laird Fisher entered.
"The gentleman frae Crewe is down at the pit about t' engine in the smelting-mill," said the old man.
"Say I shall be with him in half an hour," said Hugh, and Laird Fisher left the room. Then Hugh put the papers in his pocket.
"We have wasted too much time over the certificates—they can wait—where's the deed of mortgage?—I must have the money to pay for the new engine."