‘I suspected it, knowing your high-flown notions of duty. We all pitied you--we all----’
‘Hush!’ said the clergyman, still in the same low, agitated voice. ‘Not a word against her. She is asleep and at peace; and if there was any sin I shared it--I who ought to have known better. Perhaps, had I been a better man, I might have made her truly happy; but she didn’t love me--I did not deserve her love--and so, as you know, we parted.’
‘I know she used you shamefully,’ returned Cholmondeley, with some impatience. ‘Come, I _must_ speak! You picked her from the gutter, and made her what Mrs. Grundy calls an honest woman. How did she reward you? By bolting away with the first rascal who offered her the run of his purse and a flash set of diamonds. By-the-by, I heard of her last in India, where she was a member of a strolling company. Did she die out there?’
‘Yes,’ answered the clergyman, very sadly.
‘You were only a boy,’ continued Cholmondeley, with an air of infinite age and experience, ‘and Mr. Verdant Green was nothing to you. You thought all women angels, at an age when most youngsters know them to be devils. Well, that’s all over, and you have nothing to reproach yourself with. I wish _I_ could show as clean a book, old fellow.’
‘I do reproach myself, nevertheless,’ was the reply. ‘That boyish episode has left its taint on my whole life; yes, it is like the mark of a brand burned into the very flesh. I had no right to woo another woman; yet I have done so, to my shame, and now Heaven is about to punish me by stripping me bare in her sight and making me a social outlaw. I have deserved it all.’
The two remained together for some time longer, but Bradley, though he listened gently to his friends remonstrances, could not be persuaded to take a less gloomy view of the situation. He was relieved unconsciously, nevertheless, by the other’s cheery and worldly counsel. It was something, at least, to have eased his heart, to have poured the secret of his sorrow and fear into a sympathetic bosom.
They had dined very early, and when they rose to separate it was only half-past eight o’clock.
‘Will you go on to my chambers?’ asked Cholmondeley. ‘I can give you a bed, and I will join you after I have done my duties at the office.’