"You speak of good and bad in me," he said quickly. "Now I think you are so much in my confidence that I can trust you in what I am going to say. Don't believe that there is any good in me. I tell you the truth now because I am sorry that we have been so foolish to-night. There is no good in me. It is all—the other thing."
Nina shuddered—feeling as if he had spoken the truth but that it was already too late for her to listen to it.
He took her back into the house, smiling and pleasant to those about him, as if nothing had occurred, and left her with Mrs. Lindon.
But he did not go to find Margaret Mackintosh again. He went home somewhat excited, and smoked four or five pipes of tobacco. At first he was regretful, for he knew he had been doing harm. He said he was a whimsical fool. But after a couple of "night-caps" he began to think how picturesque she had looked in the moonlight, and he afterward dropped off into as dreamless and undisturbed a sleep as the most virtuous may enjoy.
CHAPTER VI.
For in her youth
There is a prone and speechless dialect,
Such as moves men; besides, she hath prosperous art,
When she will play with reason and discourse,
And well she can persuade.
Measure for Measure.
If anybody had stated that Geoffrey Hampstead was a scoundrel, he would have had grounds for his opinion. As he did not attempt to palliate his own misdeeds, nobody will do so for him. He repudiated the idea of being led into wrong-doing, or driven into it by outside circumstances. Whatever he did, he liked to do thoroughly, and of his own accord. When Nature lavishes her gifts, much ability for both good and evil is usually part of the general endowment; and, although, perhaps, if we knew more, all wrong-doing would receive pity, Geoffrey possessed a knowledge of results that tends to withdraw compassion. But he had overstepped the mark when he had told Nina there was no good in him. Even his own statement reminded him how few things there are about which a sweeping assertion can be made with truth. He grew impatient to find that so many people do not hold opinions—that their opinions hold them; and when the good equalities of a person under discussion met with no consideration he invariably spoke of them. He had a good word to say for most people, and no lack of courage to say it, and thus he gave impression of being fair-minded, which made men like him. He had the compassion for the faulty which seems to appear more frequently in those whose lives have been by no means without reproach than among the strictest followers of religions which claim charity as their own. He thought he realized that consciousness of virtue does not breed so much true compassion as consciousness of sin; and a young clergyman of his acquaintance found that his arguments as to the utility of sin in the world were very shocking and difficult to answer.