She gave him her hand. 'Good-bye, Roland. You will come to Scilly—when you please—as soon as you can.'
He held her hand.
'I live only in that hope,' he replied.
The train began to move. He bent and kissed her fingers.
She leaned forward. 'Roland,' she said, 'I also live only in that hope.'
CHAPTER XXVI
NOT THE HEIR, AFTER ALL
The storm expended itself. The gale cannot go on blowing: the injured man cannot go on raging, cursing, or weeping. Alec Feilding became calm. Yet a settled gloom rested like a dark cloud upon his front: he had lost something—a good part—of his pristine confidence. That enviable quality which so much impresses itself upon others—called swagger—had been knocked out of him. Indeed, he had sustained a blow from which he would never wholly recover: such a man could never get over the loss of such a fortune: his great-grandfather, so far as could be learned, lost his fortune and began again, with cheerful heart. Alec would begin again, because he must, but with rage and bitterness. It was like being struck down by an incurable disease: it might be alleviated, but it would never be driven out: from time to time, in spite of the physicians, the patient writhes and groans in the agony of this disease. So from time to time will this man, until the end of time, groan and lament over the wicked waste and loss of that superb inheritance.
Of course he disguised from himself—this is one of the things men always do hide away—the fact that he himself was part and parcel of the deed: he had destroyed himself by his own craft and cunning. Had he not placed his wife with Armorel under instructions to persuade and coax her into advancing money for his own purposes, the thing could never have happened.
Henceforth, though the pair should have the desire of their hearts: though they should march on to wealth and success: though the wife should invent and contrive with the cleverness of ten for the good of the firm: though the husband should grow more and more in the estimation of the outer world into the position of a Master and an Authority: between the two will lie the memory of fraud and crime, to divide them and keep them apart.