Huckaby, doing his best to act loyally towards both parties, led a precarious moral existence. The sight of Clementina queening it in dazzling raiment about Quixtus’s house and the despairing confidences of Lena Fontaine had enabled him to form a fairly accurate judgment of the state of affairs. His heart began to bleed for Lena Fontaine. She would come to his lodgings and claim sympathy. To not a soul in the world but him could she talk freely. She was desperate. That abominable woman insulted her, trampled on her, poisoned Quixtus’s mind against her. He had changed suddenly, seemed to avoid her, and, when he found himself in her company, he was just polite and courteous in his gentle way, and smilingly eluded her. The Dinard intimacy, on which she had reckoned, had faded into the land of dreams. He was being dragged off before her eyes to some fool place up the river to be watched and guarded like a lunatic. What was she to do? Ruin would soon be staring her in the face. She had thought of upbraiding him for neglect, of reproaching him for having played fast and loose with her affections, of putting him through the ordeal of an emotional scene. Of that, however, she was afraid; it might scare him away for good and all. She wept, an unhappy and ill-treated woman, and Huckaby supplied sympathy and handkerchiefs and a mirror so that she could repair the ravages of tears.
One day Huckaby and Clementina met in the hall of the Russell Square house.
“Well,” she said. “Have you seen Mrs. Fontaine lately?”
He admitted that he had.
“Taking it rather badly, I suppose,” she remarked with a reversion to her grim manner.
“She is miserable. As I told you, it means all the world to her—her very salvation.”
Clementina caught the note of deep pleading in his voice and fixed him with her shrewd eyes.
“You seem to concern yourself very deeply about the lady.”
Huckaby glanced at her for a moment hesitatingly; then shrugged his shoulders. Clementina was a woman to whom straight dealing counted for righteousness. He gave her his secret.
“I’ve grown to care for her—to care for her very much. I know I’m a fool, but I can’t help it.”