While Clide’s tongue was engaged on this absorbing topic, he was mentally reverting to another subject which was scarcely less absorbing, and which was closer to his heart. His love for Franceline had not abated one atom of its ardor since absence and a far more impassable gulf had parted him from her; her image reigned supreme in his heart still, and accompanied him in his waking and sleeping thoughts. He felt no compunction for this. His conscience tendered full and unflinching allegiance to the letter of the moral law, but it was in bondage to none of those finer spiritual tenets that ruled and influenced Franceline. He would have cut off his right hand rather than outrage her memory by so much as an unworthy thought; but he gave his heart full freedom to retain and foster its love for her. He had not her clear spiritual insight to discern the sinfulness of this, any more than he had her deep inward strength to enable him to crush the sin out of his heart, even if he had tried, which he did not. It was his misfortune, not his fault, that his love for her was unlawful. Nothing could make it guilty; that was in his own power, and the purity of its object was its best protection. She was an angel, and could only be worshipped with the reverent love that one of her own pure kindred spirits might accept without offence or contamination. Such was Clide’s code, and, if he wanted any internal proof of his own loyalty to sanction it, he had it in the shape of many deep-drawn sighs—prayers, he called them, and perhaps they were—that Franceline might not suffer on his account, but might forget him, and be happy after a time with some worthier husband. He had been quite honest when he sighed these sighs—at least he thought he was; yet when Sir Simon, meaning to console him and make things smooth and comfortable, assured him emphatically that they had been both happily mistaken in the nature of Franceline’s feelings, and then basely and cruelly insinuated that Ponsonby Anwyll was in a fair way to make her a good husband by and by, Clide felt a pang more acute than any he had yet experienced. This is often the case with us. We never know how much insincerity there is in the best of our prayers—the anti-self ones—until we are threatened with the grant of them.
Sir Simon said nothing about the stolen ring. His friendship for Raymond partook of that strong personal feeling which made any dishonor in its object touch him like a personal stain. He could not bear even to admit it to himself that his ideal was destroyed. M. de la Bourbonais had been his ideal of truth, of manly independence, of everything that was noble, simple, and good. There are many intervals in the scale that separates the ordinary honest man from the ideal man of honor. Sir Simon could count several of the former class; but he knew but one of the higher type. He had never known any one whom he would have placed on the same pinnacle of unsullied, impregnable honor with Raymond. Now that he had fallen, it seemed as if the very stronghold of Sir Simon’s own faith had surrendered; he could disbelieve everything, he could doubt everybody. Where was truth to be found, who was to be trusted, since Raymond de la Bourbonais had failed? But meantime he would screen him as long as he could. He would not be the first to speak of his disgrace to any one. He told Clide how Raymond had lost, for him, a considerable sum of money recently, through the dishonesty of a bank, and how he had borne the loss with the most incredible philosophy, because just then it so happened he did not want the money; but since then Franceline’s health had become very delicate, and she was ordered to a warm climate, and these few hundreds would have enabled him to take her there, and her father was now bitterly lamenting the loss.
Clide was all excitement in a moment.
“But now you can supply them?” he cried. “Or rather let me do it through you! I must not, of course, appear; but it will be something to know I am of use to her—to both of them. You can easily manage it, can you not? M. de la Bourbonais would make no difficulty in accepting the service from you.”
“Humph! As ill-luck will have it, there is a coldness between us at present,” said Sir Simon—“a little tiff that will blow off after a while but meanwhile Bourbonais is as unapproachable as a porcupine. He’s as proud as Lucifer at any time, and I fear there is no one but myself from whom he would accept a service of the kind.”
“Could not Langrove manage it? They seemed on affectionate terms,” said Clide.
“Oh! no, oh! no. That would never do!” said Sir Simon quickly. “I don’t see any one at Dullerton but myself who could attempt it.”
“Well, but some one must, since you say you can’t,” argued Clide with impatience. “When do you return to the Court?”
“I did not mean to return just yet a while. You see, I have a great deal of business to look to—of a pleasant sort, thanks to you, my dear boy, but still imperative and admitting of no delay. I can’t possibly leave town until it has been settled.”
“I should have thought Simpson might have attended to it. I suppose you mean legal matters?” said the young man with some asperity. He could not understand Sir Simon’s being hindered by mere business from sparing a day in a case of such emergency, and for such a friend. It was unlike him to be selfish, and this was downright heartlessness.