The man’s pity and tenderness were wonderfully quickened. If she had willed, he would have folded her in his arms and made her sick bed sweet. He scribbled a hasty line.
“Darling—I am grieved to the heart. Your husband loves you, dear, with a fresher love. Let me tell you so—and tell you to get well, when all things will be different and dear again.”
The old woman took the note to Minna. He crept up to the bedroom door, listened, heard the faint rustle of the paper in her hands, and then came her voice, irritable and peevish:
“Tell him to go away and let me be.”
So Hugh returned to London heavy-hearted, with a gnawing sense of having ruined the girl’s life. The weeks went past. Early in the New Year Minna returned to her father’s house, looking ill and worn. Israel noticed the change, grew solicitous as to her well-being. Why had she not told him she had been poorly at Brighton? He would have given her all the care and nursing that money could provide. His kind words caused her a faint stirring of emotion—an adumbration of a tenderness that might have been; and as the loneliness and aimlessness of her life grew more oppressive, an instinct of self-preservation drew her nearer to his side. The horror of her illness still clung to her. It was a kind of Maccabre dance over her dead passion. Yet she was conscious of wrong done to Hugh, and received him kindly when he came to see her one afternoon shortly after her return. He was anxious to make reparation.
“We are bound together for the rest of our lives, dear,” he said. “Perhaps it was a mistake to begin with—and certainly the secrecy has been a terrible blunder. Let us brave it all out now and be done with it, and start life afresh.”
“Do you think we can ever be happy again together?”
“My dear little girl, I have wronged you—but I will try to make amends. I have a certain position in society—even if you don’t love me, your life will be brighter than it is now.”
She leaned back in one of her indolent attitudes. “Perhaps. Not now. I am afraid of my father. He might curse me—and that would be annoying.” Hugh paused, somewhat baffled at this new idea. “They will be merely words of anger,” he replied. “It will not be long lived.”
But she shook her head. It was better to wait. Perhaps she might gradually influence him—and then all would be smooth sailing. Hugh saw an element of reason in her proposal, and for a time returned to his briefs. For his own sake, he was not loth to postpone the announcement. The debt to Israel weighed heavily upon his conscience. But as long as his marriage remained a secret, and as long as his uncle lived, he could spare himself the galling reproach of trickery. Meanwhile his practice was showing signs of improvement. A brilliant cast might land him at a bound into affluence, and then he could raise the money, cry quits with the urbane and gentle mannered Shylock on the score of his ducats, and brave his reproaches on the score of his daughter. Thus doth hope spring eternal in the human breast.