The ill consequences of this folly, this mysterious and unmeaning craft, had now in some degree recoiled upon himself. And delighting, as he really did, in the closest intercourse with his sweet young bride, he chafed and fumed at finding that the necessity of keeping up the concealment, which he had so needlessly insisted on, precluded him from the possibility of enjoying his new possession, as he would, entirely and at all hours.
He would have given almost his right hand now to be able to declare openly that she was his own. But, for once in his life, he dared not! He could not bring himself to confess to his kind father the cruel breach of confidence, the foul and causeless deceit of which he had been guilty; and he began almost to look forward to the death of that excellent and idolizing parent, as the only event that could allow him to call his wife his own.
It was not long before his wish—if that can be called a wish, which he dared not confess to his own guilty heart, was accomplished.
The first snows had not fallen yet, when the old cavalier fell ill, and declined so rapidly that before the old year was dead he was gathered to his fathers. As he had lived, so he died, a just, upright, kindly, honorable man. At peace with all men, and in faith with his God.
His last words were entreaty to his son to take Theresa Allen to his wife, and to live with her unambitiously, unostentatiously, as he had lived himself, and was about to die, at Widecomb. And even then, though he promised to obey his father’s bidding, the boy’s heart was not softened, nor was his conscience touched by any sense of the wrong he had done. He promised, and as the good man’s dying eye kindled with pleasure, he smiled on him with an honest seeming smile, received his parting kiss, and closed his eyes, and stood beside the dead, unrelenting, unrepentant.
He was the Lord of Widecomb; and so soon as the corpse by which he stood should be composed in the quiet grave, the world should know him, too, as the Lord of Theresa Allan.
And so he swore to her, when he stole that night, as he had done nightly since their marriage, to her chamber, after every light was extinguished, and, as he believed, every eye closed in sleep; and she, fond soul! believed him, and clasped him to her heart, and sunk into sleep, with her head pillowed on his breast, happier than she had been since she had once—for the first, last time—deviated from the paths of truth.
But he who has once taken up deceit as his guide, knows not when he can quit it. He may, indeed, say to himself “thus far will I go, and no further,” but when he shall have once attained the proposed limit, and shall set himself to work to recover that straight path from which he has once deviated, fortunate will he be, indeed, if he find not a thousand obstacles, which it shall tax his utmost energy, his utmost ingenuity to surmount, if he have not to cry out in despair—
Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive.