CHAPTER 10
After Amelius had left him, Rufus remembered his promise to communicate with Regina by telegraph.
With his strict regard for truth, it was no easy matter to decide on what message he should send. To inspire Regina, if possible, with his own unshaken belief in the good faith of Amelius, appeared, on reflection, to be all that he could honestly do, under present circumstances. With an anxious and foreboding mind, he despatched his telegram to Paris in these terms:—“Be patient for a while, and do justice to A. He deserves it.”
Having completed his business at the telegraph-office, Rufus went next to pay his visit to Mrs. Payson.
The good lady received him with a grave face and a distant manner, in startling contrast to the customary warmth of her welcome. “I used to think you were a man in a thousand,” she began abruptly; “and I find you are no better than the rest of them. If you have come to speak to me about that blackguard young Socialist, understand, if you please, that I am not so easily imposed upon as Miss Regina. I have done my duty; I have opened her eyes to the truth, poor thing. Ah, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
Rufus kept his temper, with his habitual self-command. “It’s possible you may be right,” he said quietly; “but the biggest rascal living has a claim to an explanation, when a lady puzzles him. Have you any particular objection, old friend, to tell me what you mean?”
The explanation was not of a nature to set his mind at ease.
Regina had written, by the mail which took Rufus to England, repeating to Mrs. Payson what had passed at the interview in the Champs Elysees, and appealing to her sympathy for information and advice. Receiving the letter that morning, Mrs. Payson, acting on her own generous and compassionate impulses, had already answered it, and sent it to the post. Her experience of the unfortunate persons received at the Home was far from inclining her to believe in the innocence of a runaway girl, placed under circumstances of temptation. As an act of justice towards Regina, she enclosed to her the letter in which Amelius had acknowledged that Sally had passed the night under his roof.
“I believe I am only telling you the shameful truth,” Mrs. Payson had written, “when I add that the girl has been an inmate of Mr. Goldenheart’s cottage ever since. If you can reconcile this disgraceful state of things, with Mr. Rufus Dingwell’s assertion of his friend’s fidelity to his marriage-engagement, I have no right, and no wish, to make any attempt to alter your opinion. But you have asked for my advice, and I must not shrink from giving it. I am bound as an honest woman, to tell you that your uncle’s resolution to break off the engagement represents the course that I should have taken myself, if a daughter of my own had been placed in your painful and humiliating position.”