“Bravo! I knew it!” cried Lady Strange, clapping her hands.
“Lady Strange, I owe you five guineas,” said Foxwell, gallantly. “Mr. Everell, at this hour a week hence—ten o’clock, shall we call it?—you are my prisoner.” He rang the bell, and Caleb entered. “Cut this gentleman’s cords—there has been a mistake. And nothing is to be said of his presence here, or of what has occurred to-night—nay, I’ll give orders separately to all the servants.” He waited till Everell stood entirely freed; he then sent a message to Miss Foxwell, asking her to come to the drawing-room if she had not yet retired.
“I take it,” he explained to Everell, when Caleb had left the room, “you would have her know at once how matters have fallen out—as far as you would have her know at all for the present—that you are to be our guest for awhile, at least.”
“Certainly,—but”—and here Everell turned pale—“she must not know the condition.”
“I agree with you there,” said Foxwell, smiling. “For the comfort of both of us, she had best not know—till afterward, at least.”
“Afterward!” echoed Everell; “and what will be her feelings then? I hadn’t thought of that.”
“We have all overlooked that, I own. We have thought only of you and your feelings. But you need not be dismayed—the most devoted of women are not inconsolable.”
“’Tis not that I think she loves me much; but she is of so tender a nature, when she learns the price I shall have paid—yet how could I have chosen otherwise, even considering her feelings?—what would she have thought, had I preferred to renounce her? Or suppose I had declined to choose?”
“Why, then, her feelings would be the same, on your being handed over to justice at once, as they will be a week hence. Nay, indeed, in a week’s time she may not be as sorry to be rid of you. We shall see when the time comes: if need be, we can hide the truth from her then as now—when the week is over, you can take your leave upon some pretext, and trust time to efface your image from her heart. Take my advice, trouble yourself not about her feelings: be happy for a week, and don’t think of ‘afterward.’”
Everell sighed, but in truth he could not at that time see how her feelings could have been spared in any measure by either of the other courses open to him. Indeed, it seemed to him that fidelity to her required him to elect as he had done; that any other choice would have been a renunciation of her, a treason to love. So let him be happy for a week: at the end, it would be time to think how to save her feelings.