He did read the letter more than once, and read it with tingling ears, and hot cheeks, and a knitted brow. As the letter went on, and as the woman's sense of wrong grew hot from her own telling of her own story, her words became stronger and still stronger, till at last they were almost insolent in their strength. Were it not that they came from one who did think herself to have been wronged, then certainly they would be insolent. A sense of injury, a burning conviction of wrong sustained, will justify language which otherwise would be unbearable. The Duke felt that, though his ears were tingling and his brow knitted, he could have forgiven the language, if only he could have admitted the argument. He understood every word of it. When she spoke of tenacity she intended to charge him with obstinacy. Though she had dwelt but lightly on her own services she had made her thoughts on the matter clear enough. 'I, Mrs Finn, who am nobody, have done much to succour and assist you, the Duke of Omnium; and this is the return which I have received!' And then she told him to his face that unless he did something which it would be impossible that he should do, she would revoke her opinion of his honesty!
He tried to persuade himself that her opinion about his honesty was nothing to him;--but he failed. Her opinion was very much to him. Though in his anger he had determined to throw her off from him, he knew her to be one whose good opinion was worth having.
Not a word of overt accusation had been made against his wife.
Every allusion to her was full of love. But yet how heavy a charge was really made! That such a secret should be kept from him, the father, was acknowledged to be a heinous fault;--but the wife had known the secret and had kept it from him the father! And then how wretched a thing it was for him that anyone should dare to write to him about the wife that had been taken away from him! In spite of all her faults her name was so holy to him that it had never once passed his lips since her death, except in low whispers to himself,--low whispers made in the perfect, double-guarded seclusion of his own chamber. 'Cora, Cora,' he had murmured, so that the sense of the sound and not the sound itself had come to him from his own lips. And now this woman wrote to him about her freely, as though there were nothing sacred, no religion in the memory of her.
'It was not for me to raise any question as to Mr Tregear's fitness'. Was it not palpable to all the world that he was unfit?
Unfit! How could a man be more unfit? He was asking for the hand of one who was second only to royalty--who possessed of everything, who was beautify, well-born, rich, who was the daughter of the Duke of Omnium, and he had absolutely nothing of his own to offer.
But it was necessary that he should at last come to the consideration of the actual point as to which she had written to him so forcibly. He tried to set himself to the task of perfect honestly. He certainly lad condemned her. He had condemned her and had no doubt punished her to the extent of his power. And if he could be brought to see that he had done this unjustly, then certainly he must beg pardon. And when he considered it all, he had to own that her intimacy with his uncle and his wife had not been so much of her seeking as of theirs. It grieved him now that it should have been so, but so it was. And after all this,--after the affectionate surrender of herself to his wife's caprices which the woman had made,--he had turned upon her and driven her away with ignominy. That all was true. As he thought of it he became hot, and was conscious of a quivering feeling round his heart.
These wee bonds indeed; but they were bonds of such a nature as to be capable of being rescinded and cut away altogether by absolute bad conduct. If he could make it good to himself that in a matter of such magnitude as the charge of his daughter she had been untrue to him and had leagued herself against him, with an unworthy lover, then, then,--all bonds would be rescinded! Then would his wrath be altogether justified! Then would it have been impossible that he should have done aught else than cast her out!
As he thought of this he felt sure that she had betrayed him! How great would be the ignominy to him should he be driven to own to himself that she had not betrayed him! 'There should not have been a moment,' he said to himself over and over again,--'not a moment!' Yes; she certainly had betrayed him.
There might still be safety for him in that confident assertion of 'not a moment'; but had there been anything of that conspiracy of which he had certainly at first judged her to be guilty? She had told her story, and had then appealed to Lady Mary for evidence.
After five minutes of perfect stillness,--but five minutes of misery, five minutes during which great beads of perspiration broke out from him and stood upon his brow, he had to confess to himself that he did not want any evidence. He did believe her story. When he allowed himself to think she had been in league with Tregear he had wronged her. He wiped away the beads from his brow, and again repeated to himself those words which were now his only comfort, 'There should not have been a moment;--not a moment!'
It was thus and only thus that he was enabled to assure himself that there need be no acknowledgment of wrong done on his part.