He had no plans for Phillis, except of the simplest kind. She was to remain in charge of Agatha for a year, and then she would come out. He hoped that she would marry well, because her father, had he lived, would have wished it. And that was all he hoped about her.
He had his private worries at this time—those already indicated—connected with Victoria Cassilis. The ice once broken, that lady allowed him no rest. She wrote to him on some pretence nearly every day; she sent her maid, the unlovely one, with three-cornered notes all about nothing; she made him meet her in society, she made him dine with her; it seemed as if she was spreading a sort of net about him, through the meshes of which he could not escape.
With the knowledge of what had been, it was an unrighteous thing for Colquhoun to go to the house of Gabriel Cassilis; he ought not to be there, he felt, it was the one house in all London in which he had no business. And yet—how to avoid it?
And Gabriel Cassilis seemed to like him; evidently liked to talk to him; singled him out, this great financier, and talked with him as if Colquhoun too was interested in stock; called upon him at his chambers, and told him, in a dry but convincing way, something of his successes and his projects.
It was after many talks of this kind that Lawrence Colquhoun, forgetful of the past, and not remembering that of all men in the world Gabriel Cassilis was the last who should have charge of his money, put it all in his hands, with power-of-attorney to sell out and reinvest for him. But that was nothing. Colquhoun was not the man to trouble about money. He was safe in the hands of this great and successful capitalist: he gave no thought to any risk; he congratulated himself on his cleverness in persuading the financier to take the money for him; and he continued to see Victoria Cassilis nearly every day.
They quarrelled when they did meet; there was not a conversation between them in which she did not say something bitter, and he something savage. And yet he did not have the courage to refuse the invitations which were almost commands. Nor could she resign the sweet joys of making him feel her power.
A secret, you see, has a fatal fascination about it. Schoolgirls, I am told, are given to invent little secrets which mean nothing, and to whisper them in the ears of their dearest friends to the exclusion of the rest. The possession of this unknown and invaluable fact brings them together, whispering and conspiring, at every possible moment. Freemasons again—how are they kept together; except by the possession of secrets which are said to have been published over and over again? And when two people have a secret which means—all that the secret between Colquhoun and Mrs. Cassilis meant, they can no more help being drawn together than the waters can cease to find their own level. To be together, to feel that the only other person in the world who knows that secret is with you, is a kind of safety. Yet what did it matter to Colquhoun? Simply nothing. The secret was his as well as hers, but the reasons for keeping it a secret were not his at all, but hers entirely.
So Phillis was neglected by her guardian and left to Agatha and Jack Dunquerque, with such results as we shall see.
So Lawrence Colquhoun fell into the power of this man of stocks, about the mouth of whose City den the footsteps pointed all one way. He congratulated himself; he found out Gilead Beck, and they congratulated each other.
"I don't see," said Colquhoun, who had already enough for four bachelors, "why one's income should not be doubled."