For, after all, these were minor points. In all likelihood, she concluded, Eversleigh would confirm Bennet's statements. If so, what then?
And, now, Kitty Thornton had need of all her courage.
The fate of the Eversleighs was in her hands; she could save them, but at what a price!
She could save them, but only by condemning herself to misery for the rest of her life.
As she sat thinking, thinking of the wretchedness that must be hers as the wife of Bennet, the poor girl closed her eyes, as if thus she could shut out that blank and dreary prospect. She had no illusions as to the nature of the man. In her heart she called him a bully and a brute, and she knew he was a desperate gambler. Her life with him could be nothing but one long horror.
"I cannot marry him," she said, rebelling against the harshness and bitterness of the dilemma thrust upon her.
She knew Bennet would keep his word did she refuse to marry him; Francis Eversleigh would be arrested, and he and his family overwhelmed in one common ruin.
Hitherto she had striven to keep the thought of her lover, Gilbert, out of her mind, so as to be able to reason more clearly, but in its background Gilbert had always been. She loved him with her whole heart, and it was seldom that, consciously or unconsciously, she was not thinking about him. She had looked forward with pride and joy to being his wife. And now?
Bennet had declared that Gilbert's father's ruin would be Gilbert's ruin too.
"I must, I must," said Kitty, bravely, but her heart was cold as ice. "Cost me what it may, I must save him from ruin."
She told herself that it was her duty to make this sacrifice for her lover's sake, and she tried to steel herself to the idea. But when she thought of the long and bitter years that lay before her as the wife of Harry Bennet, her courage grew less and less.
"I must not think of _that_," she said; "if I do, I shall break down. I must think, and think only, of saving them from the ruin which threatens them all."
Still the tears would come into her eyes. She wiped them away, however, and when she went down to dinner showed no traces of them. Her eyes were suspiciously bright, and the spots of colour on her cheeks were less brilliant than usual, but her aspect was so little different from what it generally was that even Helen Eversleigh, who looked at her inquiringly when they met, did not observe any change in her appearance.