"Be at the church at six," he said. "I will provide everything and see that everything is ready for you. Do not be recognised as you pass along the street. You can wear a domino with the pink silk cloak which you wore the other night at the assembly. Then I shall recognise you. No one else, Molly, need be considered. Are you sure that you understand?"
"Yes," she sighed. "I understand."
"Then, Molly," he bowed low, and, without offering to kiss her, this wonderful lover left his mistress and was carried home in his chair.
CHAPTER XXX
THE SECRET
All these things were told me by Molly herself in the afternoon. You may very well believe that my heart was sick and sore to think of Molly being thus thrown away for a bribe of rank and position upon a man who seemed to be of marble or of ice. For of one thing concerning women I am very certain, that to make them happy they must be loved. At the time I could not know, nor did I suspect, that this noble earl was marrying Molly for her fortune. Like the captain, I pictured him as one lifted above the common lot and apart from all temptations as regards money, by his own great possessions. Why, he had nothing—nothing at all. So much I know—he had wasted and dissipated the whole. There was nothing left, and his marriage, especially his private and hurried manner of it, was designed wholly to give him the possession and the control of Molly's riches.
"To-morrow, then, we lose you, Molly."
"To-morrow, Jack. His lordship consents that whenever, if ever, I am within an easy journey of Lynn I may come back to see my mother. But when will that be? Alas! I know not. Gloucestershire is on the other side of the country."
"After all, Molly, there are many wives who thus go away with their husbands and never see their own folk any more. They forget them; they find their happiness with the home and the children. Why, my dear, in a year or two, when you have grown accustomed to your state and the condition of a great lady, you will forget Lynn and the old friends."
"Never, Jack, never. You might as well expect me to forget the days when we were children together and played about the Lady's Mount and on the walls, and rowed our dingey in the river. Forget my own folks? Jack, am I a monster?"