But yet he had not given up the man. Though he could not restrain himself from foreshadowing the misery that would result from such baseness, yet he told himself that he would not condemn before condemnation was necessary. Harry Clavering might not be good enough for Florence. What man was good enough for Florence? But still, if married, Harry, he thought, would not make a bad husband. Many a man who is prone enough to escape from the bonds which he has undertaken to endure—to escape from them before they are riveted—is mild enough under their endurance, when they are once fastened upon him. Harry Clavering was not of such a nature that Burton could tell himself that it would be well that his sister should escape even though her way of escape must lie through the fire and water of outraged love. That Harry Clavering was a gentleman, that he was clever, that he was by nature affectionate, soft in manner, tender of heart, anxious to please, good-tempered, and of high ambition, Burton knew well; and he partly recognized the fact that Harry had probably fallen into his present fault more by accident than by design. Clavering was not a skilled and practiced deceiver. At last, as he drew near to his own door, he resolved on the line of conduct he would pursue. He would tell his wife everything, and she should receive Harry alone.
He was weary when he reached home, and was a little cross with his fatigue. Good man as he was, he was apt to be fretful on the first moment of his return to his own house, hot with walking, tired with his day’s labour, and in want of his dinner. His wife understood this well, and always bore with him at such moments, coming down to him in the dressing-room behind the back parlour, and ministering to his wants. I fear he took some advantage of her goodness, knowing that at such moments he could grumble and scold without danger of contradiction. But the institution was established, and Cecilia never rebelled against its traditional laws. On the present day he had much to say to her, but even that he could not say without some few symptoms of petulant weariness.
“I’m afraid you’ve had a terrible long day,” she said.
“I don’t know what you call terribly long. I find the days terribly short. I have had Harry with me, as I told you I should.”
“Well, well. Say in one word, dear, that it is all right—if it is so.”
“But it is not all right. I wonder what on earth the men do to the boots, that I can never get a pair that do not hurt me in walking.” At this moment she was standing over him with his slippers.
“Will you have a glass of sherry before dinner, dear; you are so tired?”
“Sherry—no!”
“And what about Harry? You don’t mean to say—”
“If you’ll listen, I’ll tell you what I do mean to say.” Then he described to her as well as he could, what had really taken place between him and Harry Clavering at the office.
“He cannot mean to be false, if he is coming here,” said the wife.
“He does not mean to be false; but he is one of those men who can be false without meaning it—who allow themselves to drift away from their anchors, and to be carried out into seas of misery and trouble, because they are not careful in looking to their tackle. I think that he may still be held to a right course, and therefore I have begged him to come here.”
“I am sure that you are right, Theodore. He is so good and so affectionate, and he made himself so much one of us!”
“Yes; too easily by half. That is just the danger. But look here, Cissy. I’ll tell you what I mean to do. I will not see him myself;—at any rate, not at first. Probably I had better not see him at all. You shall talk to him.”
“By myself!”
“Why not? You and he have always been great friends, and he is a man who can speak more openly to a woman than to another man.”
“And what shall I say as to your absence?”
“Just the truth. Tell him that I am remaining in the dining-room because I think his task will be easier with you in my absence. He has got himself into some mess with that woman.”
“With Lady Ongar?”
“Yes; not that her name was mentioned between us, but I suppose it is so.”
“Horrible woman;—wicked, wretched creature!”
“I know nothing about that, nor, as I suppose, do you.”
“My dear, you must have heard.”
“But if I had—and I don’t know that I have—I need not have believed. I am told that she married an old man who is now dead, and I suppose she wants a young husband.”
“My dear!”
“If I were you, Cissy, I would say as little as might be about her. She was an old friend of Harry’s—”
“She jilted him when he was quite a boy; I know that;—long before he had seen our Florence.”
“And she is connected with him through his cousin. Let her be ever so bad, I should drop that.”
“You can’t suppose, Theodore, that I want even to mention her name. I’m told that nobody ever visits her.”
“She needn’t be a bit the worse on that account. Whenever I hear that there is a woman whom nobody visits, I always feel inclined to go and pay my respects to her.”
“Theodore, how can you say so?”
“And that, I suppose, is just what Harry has done. If the world and his wife had visited Lady Ongar, there would not have been all this trouble now.”
Mrs. Burton of course undertook the task which her husband assigned to her, though she did so with much nervous trepidation, and many fears lest the desired object should be lost through her own maladroit management. With her, there was at least
