There were excuses for him.  In the first place, it would have been an ugly thing to take notice of any man’s attentions to a wife; it could not be done but upon the strongest grounds, and done in a way which would make a complete rupture necessary, so breaking up the party in a sufficiently unpleasant way.  Besides, to move in the matter at all would be to implicate Lucia; for, of whatsoever kind Campbell’s attentions were, she evidently liked them; and a quarrel with her on that score was more than Elsley dared face.  He was not a man of strong moral courage; he hated a scene of any kind; and he was afraid of being worsted in any really serious quarrel, not merely by Campbell, but by Lucia.  It may seem strange that he should be afraid of her, though not so that he should be afraid of Campbell.  But the truth is, that the man who bullies his wife very often does so—­as Elsley had done more than once—­simply to prove to himself his own strength, and hide his fear of her.  He knew well that woman’s tongue, when once the “fair beast” is brought to bay, is a weapon far too trenchant to be faced by any shield but that of a very clear conscience toward her; which was more than Elsley had.

Beside—­and it is an honour to Elsley Vavasour, amid all his weakness, that he had justice and chivalry enough left to know what nine men out of ten ignore—­behind all, let the worst come to the worst, lay one just and terrible rejoinder, which he, though he had been no worse than the average of men, could only answer by silent shame,—­

“At least, sir, I was pure when I came to you!  You best know whether you were so likewise.”

And yet even that, so all-forgiving is woman, might, have been faced by some means:  but the miserable complication about the false name still remained.  Elsley believed that he was in his wife’s power; that she could, if she chose, turn upon him, and proclaim him to the world as a scoundrel and an impostor.  And, as it is of the nature of man to hate those whom he fears, Elsley began to have dark and ugly feelings toward Lucia.  Instead of throwing them away, as a strong man would have done, he pampered them almost without meaning to do so.  For he let them run riot through his too vivid imagination, in the form of possible speeches, possible scenes, till he had looked and looked through a hundred thoughts which no man has a right to entertain for a moment.  True; he had entertained them with horror; but he ought not to have entertained them at all; he ought to have kicked them contemptuously out and back to the devil, from whence they came.  It may be again, that this is impossible to man; that prayer is the only refuge against that Walpurgis-dance of the witches and the fiends, which will, at hapless moments, whirl unbidden through a mortal brain:  but Elsley did not pray.