“And so you have a lover in secret—eh?” he laughed, leaning back and regarding her with half-closed eyes. “Like every other girl, you dream of marriage and happiness—a shadowy dream, I can assure you. Happiness is as tangible as the moonbeams, and love as fleeting as the sunset. But you are young, and will disbelieve me. I don’t ask you to heed me, indeed, for I am old and world-weary and soured of life. I only urge upon you to pause, and think deeply, very deeply and earnestly, before you plight your troth to any man. Most men are unworthy, and all men are liars.”
Had he brought her there at that unusual hour to deliver a discourse upon the perils of affection?
She sat listening to him without uttering a word. But she thought of Max—her Max, who loved her so dearly and so well—and she laughed within herself at the old man’s well-meant warnings.
His words were those of a man whose happiness had been wrecked by some woman, vain and worthless.
Why had he insisted that she should visit him in secret? To her, his motive was a complete enigma, rendered the more complicated by his vigorous denunciation of affection, and all that appertained to it.
Chapter Thirty.
The Spider’s Parlour.
“What you have told me, Miss Rolfe, concerning your brother’s engagement, interests me greatly,” the old fellow said at last. “He is entirely in my confidence, and a most valuable assistant, therefore I, naturally, am very anxious that he should not make an unhappy marriage.”