And with a haughty air she broke the seal. As she read she turned herself from him, so that he saw little more of her face than her firmly moulded chin. But when she had carried her eyes some way down the sheet he noticed that her hands began to shake.
“Henrietta,” so Captain Clyne began,—“for to add any term of endearment were either too little or too much—I have thought long and painfully, as becomes one who expected to be by this time your husband, on the situation in which you have placed yourself by an escapade, the consequences of which, whatever action be taken, must be permanently detrimental. Of these, as they touch myself, I say nothing, the object of these lines being to indicate a way by which I trust your honour and character may be redeemed. The bearer, whom I know for a man of merit and respectability, saw you by chance on the occasion of your visit to my house, and, as I learned by a word indiscreetly dropped, admired you. He has been admitted to the secret of your adventure, and is willing, without more and upon my representation of the facts of the case, to make you his wife and to give you the shelter of his name. After long thought I can devise no better course, whereby, innocent of aught but folly, as I believe you to be, the honour of the family can be preserved. Still, I would not suggest or advise the step were I not sure that Mr. Sutton, though beneath us by extraction, is a person of parts and worth in whose hands your future will be safe, while his material prosperity shall be my care. I have advised him to take such opportunities as offer of commending himself to you before delivering this note. Gladly would I counsel you to take the advice of your brother and his wife were I not aware how bitter is their resentment and how complete their estrangement. I, on the other hand, whose right to advise you may question—— But it were idle to say more than that I forgive you, as I hope to be forgiven. Nor will your interests ever be indifferent to
“Your kinsman,
“Anthony Clyne.”
Mr. Sutton noted the growing tremour of the hands which held the paper—he could hear it rustle. And his face, usually so pallid, flushed. Into the greyness of a life that had been happier if the chaplain had possessed less of those parts for which Captain Clyne commended him, had burst this vision of a bride, young, beautiful, and brilliant; a daughter of that world which thought him honoured by the temporary possession of a single finger, or the gift of a careless nod. Who could blame him if he succumbed? Aladdin, on the point of marriage with the daughter of the Sultan, bent to no greater temptation; nor any barber or calendar of them all, when on the verge of a like match. He had seen Henrietta once only, he had viewed her then as a thing of grace and refinement meet only for his master. At the prospect of possessing her, such scruples as rose in his mind faded quickly. He told himself that he would be foolish indeed if he did not carry the matter through with a bold face; or if for fear of a few hard words, or a pouting beauty, he yielded up the opportunity of a life.
On the hill he had proved himself equal to the call. Not so now. He had pictured the girl taking the news in many ways, in scorn, in anger, with shallow coquetry, or in dull resignation. But he had never anticipated the way in which she did take it. When she had read the letter to the end she turned her back on him and bent her head.
“Oh!” she cried; and broke into weeping—not passionate nor bitter, he was prepared for that—but the soft and helpless weeping of a broken thing.
That they, that Anthony Clyne, above all, should do this to her! That he should think of her as a chattel to be handed from one to another, a girl so light that all men were the same to her, if they were men! That they, that he should hold her so cheap, deem her so smirched by what had passed, misread her so vilely as to think that she had fallen to this! That with indifference she would give herself to any man, no matter to whom, if she could that way keep her name and hold up her head!
It hurt her horribly. Nay, for the time it broke her down. The mid-day coach swept by to the inn door, and the parson, standing beside her, ashamed of himself and conscious of the passengers’ curious glances, wished himself anywhere else. But she was wounded too sorely to care who saw or who heard; and she wept openly though quietly until the first sharpness of the pain was blunted. Then he thought, as her sobbing grew less vehement, that his time was come, that he might yet be heard. And he murmured that he was grieved, he was sorely grieved.
“So am I!” she said, dabbing her eyes with her wet handkerchief. She sobbed out the words so humbly, so weakly, that he was encouraged.