"I am quite aware that Everest has been very wild," she said icily, "but we all hoped he would come home and settle down now to a quiet and godly life."
Regina was silent for a few moments. Her gaze swept round the peaceful, restful room, where the walls had never echoed a hard or unloving word all the time that she and Everest had occupied it, which had enclosed a shrine of perfect love, where both had vied with each other in self-sacrifice, in tenderness, in devotion, and wondered if indeed any life could be more godly than theirs.
"We all hoped he would marry his cousin, Lady Constance Sybil Graham, on his return to this country, and he would have done, I believe, but for you. He would now, if—if——" She hesitated.
"You think it would be a good beginning for the godly life, to desert me, when I love him and he loves me, in order to marry someone who has a better worldly position, is that it?" Regina asked, leaning forward. Her eyes were full of mirth.
Miss Lanark felt horribly embarrassed. It is so difficult to keep up the religious and the worldly line of argument side by side. She hesitated and then said coldly:
"A sister has to consider her brother's worldly interests as well as the welfare of his soul, and if you would listen to your better nature, and set him free by going away from him, both would benefit, I feel sure."
This was a little ambiguous, but Regina understood the "both" to refer to Everest's soul and his worldly interests. She looked away to the fire in silence; to her open, courageous nature, to her singleness of mind, it seemed truly marvellous this straining after the cloak of religion, this dragging of the mantle of piety round the grinning skeleton of lust after riches and worldly good.
Miss Lanark brought with her into this room, where Everest and she had led such a frank, sincere and natural existence, just the same atmosphere of falsity, of pretence, of humbug, that had pervaded the Rectory. She could well understand how Everest had hated his home as she had hated hers, and with this thought came the sweet recollection of a phrase of his, uttered in one of their close embraces:
"I have never known happiness till now."
"Everest is perfectly free to leave me if he likes," she answered, after a minute. "I should never stand in the way of his marrying or doing anything he wishes, but while he is perfectly happy I am not going to leave him and cause him distress and pain, nor am I going to try to force him into a marriage with a commonplace woman, who I don't believe could satisfy him."