Tiverton, who
had his own reasons for being interested in Brocton, told me they were
hand and glove together.
In a little while a month may be, a change came over the relation in
which Margaret and I stood to each other. We both fought against it but in
vain. We could not travel on parallel lines, we two. We must either
converge or diverge, and fate had given me no choice.
I used to pretend I was going out, to ride or lounge with the Marquess or
some other acquaintance, and then slip upstairs to the quiet old library,
bury myself in a windowed recess cut off by curtains, and try to forget it
all in a book. Fool-like I thought I could solve my problem so. The
Hanyards was calling me and I dared not go. I should leave Margaret, and I
could not leave her.
Why, I asked myself a thousand times, was I so poor a cur compared with
Donald? He had done what I had done, and he had seen his way at once and
followed it. He would not live, having, in all innocence and with the most
urgent of all reasons, killed his friend. Not that I felt that his
solution was my solution. My duty was to leave Margaret and to go to Kate,
to help her, to the best of my ability, to live down her sorrow, and to
show by my life and conduct that I would pay the price.
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