"Seeing that I shall marry her, I think it will be expected that you should give her to her husband; but if you have an objection—"
"An objection?" Mr. Bonnithorne interrupted. "I don't know that my feeling is so serious as that."
"Then let us leave it there, and you'll decide in the morning," said Parson Christian.
So they left it there, and Mr. Bonnithorne, the dear friend of the family, made haste to the telegraph office and sent this telegram to Hugh Ritson in London: "They are to be married to-morrow. If you have anything imperative to say, write to-night, or come."
Paul and Greta saw each other only for five minutes that day amid the general hubbub; but their few words were pregnant with serious issues. Beneath the chorus of their hearts' joy there was an undersong of discord; and neither knew of the other's perplexity.
Greta was thinking of Hugh Ritson's mysterious threat. Whether or not Hugh had the power of preventing their marriage was a question of less consequence to Greta at this moment than the other question of whether or not she could tell Paul what Hugh had said. As the day wore on, her uncertainty became feverish. If she spoke, she must reveal—what hitherto she had partly hidden—the importunity and unbrotherly disloyalty of Hugh's love. She must also awaken fresh distress in Paul's mind, already overburdened with grief for the loss of his mother. Probably Paul would be powerless to interpret his brother's strange language. And if he should be puzzled, the more he must be pained. Perhaps Hugh Ritson's threat was nothing but the outburst of a distempered spirit—the noise of a bladder that is emptying itself. Still, Greta's nervousness increased; no reason, no sophistry could allay it. She felt like a blind man who knows by the current of air on his face that he has reached two street crossings, and can not decide which turn to take.
Paul, on his part, had a grave question to revolve. He was thinking whether it was the act of an honorable man to let Greta marry him in ignorance of the fact that he was not his father's legitimate son. Yet he could never tell her. The oath he had taken over his father's body must seal his lips forever. His mother's honor was wrapped up in that oath. Break the one, and the other was no longer inviolate. True, it would be to Greta, and Greta alone, and she and he were one. True, too, his mother was now dead to the world. But the oath was rigid:
"Never to reveal to any human soul, by word or deed, his act, or her shame." He had sworn it, and he must keep it. The conflict of emotion was terrible. Love was dragging him one way, and love the other. Honor said yes, and honor said no. His heart's first thought was to tell Greta everything, to keep nothing back from her whose heart's last thought was his. But the secret of his birth must lie as a dead and speechless thing within him.
If it was not the act of an honorable man to let Greta marry him in ignorance of his birth, there was only one escape from the dishonor—not to let her marry him at all. If they married, the oath must be kept. If the oath were kept, the marriage might be dishonored—it could not be the unreserved and complete union of soul with soul, heart with heart, mind with mind, which true marriage meant. It would be laying the treasure at the altar and keeping back part of the price.
Paul was not a man of subtle intellect, or perhaps such reflections would have troubled him too deeply. Love was above everything, and to give up Greta was impossible. If Circumstance was the evil genius of a man's life, should it be made the god of it also?