Part 48 (1/2)
”Is it my fancy,” she asked, ”or have you something on your mind? The note which reached you contained no ill news, I hope?”
”I don't know,” he answered, with unexpected candour. ”I have a great deal on my mind.”
”I am so sorry,” she murmured.
They had reached the further end of the gallery now. She sank into the window seat and made room for him by her side. For a moment he looked out across the park. In the moonless night the trees were like little dark blurs, the country rose and fell like a turbulent sea. And very close at hand, ominously close at hand as it seemed to him, a bright light from Richard Vont's cottage was burning steadily.
”Let me ask you a question,” he begged a little abruptly. ”Supposing that you had given your word of honour, solemnly, in return for a vital service rendered, to commit a dishonourable action; what should you do?”
”Well, that is rather a dilemma, isn't it?” she acknowledged. ”To tell you the truth, I can't quite reconcile the circ.u.mstances. I can't, for instance, conceive your promising to do a dishonourable thing.”
”At the time,” he explained, ”it did not seem dishonourable. At the time it seemed just an act of justice. Then circ.u.mstances changed, new considerations intervened, and the whole situation was altered.”
”Is it a monetary matter?” she enquired, ”one in which money would make any difference, I mean?”
He shook his head.
”Money has nothing to do with it,” he replied. ”It is just a question whether one is justified in breaking a solemn oath, one's word of honour, because the action which it entails has become, owing to later circ.u.mstances, hideously repugnant.”
”Why ask my advice?”
”I do not know. Anyhow, I desire it.”
”I should go,” she said thoughtfully, ”to the person to whom I had bound myself, and I should explain the change in my feelings and in the circ.u.mstances. I should beg to be released from my word.”
”And if they refused?”
”I don't see how you could possibly break your word of honour,” she decided reluctantly. ”It is not done, is it?”
He looked steadily down the gallery, through the darkened portion, to where the soft, overhead lights fell upon the two card tables. There was very little conversation. They could even hear the soft fall of the cards and Sylvia's musical laugh in the background. All the time Let.i.tia watched him. The strength of his face seemed only intensified by his angry indecision.
”You are right,” he a.s.sented finally. ”I must not.”
”Perhaps,” she suggested, ”you can find some way of keeping it, and yet keeping it without that secondary dishonour you spoke of. Now I must really go and see that my guests are behaving properly.”
She rose to her feet. Sylvia's laugh rang out again from the far corner of the gallery, where she and Grantham were seated, their heads very close together. Let.i.tia watched them for a moment tolerantly.
”I will recall my fianc to his duty,” she declared, ”and you can go and talk nonsense to Sylvia.”
”Thank you,” he answered, ”I am afraid that I am not in the humour to talk nonsense with anybody.”
She turned her head slightly and looked at him.
”Sylvia is such an admirer of yours,” she said, ”and she has such a delightful way of being light-hearted herself and affecting others in the same fas.h.i.+on. If I were a man--”
”Yes?”
”I should marry Sylvia.”