Which would prove the stronger, the attraction or the repulsion?

“How can I?” she said to herself, over and over again.

“When I remember Lady Newhaven, how can I?  When I think of what his conduct was for a whole year, how can I?  Can he have any sense of honor to have acted like that?  Is he even really sorry?  He is very charming, very refined, and he loves me.  He looks good, but what do I know of him except evil?  He looks as if he could be faithful, but how can I trust him?”

Hugh fell into a deep dejection after his narrow escape.  Dr. Brown said it was nervous prostration, and Doll rode into Southminster and returned laden with comic papers.  Who shall say whether the cause was physical or mental?  Hugh had seen death very near for the first time, and the thought of death haunted him.  He had not realized when he drew lots that he was risking the possibility of anything like that, such an entire going away, such an awful rending of his being as the short word death now conveyed to him.  He had had no idea it would be like that.  And he had got to do it again.  There was the crux.  He had got to do it again.

He leaned back faint and shuddering in the deck-chair in the rose-garden where he was lying.

Presently Rachel appeared, coming towards him down the narrow grass walk between two high walls of hollyhocks.  She had a cup of tea in her hand.

“I have brought you this,” she said, “with a warning that you had better not come in to tea.  Mr. Gresley has been sighted walking up the drive.  Mrs. Loftus thought you would like to see him, but I reminded her that Dr. Brown said you were to be kept very quiet.”

Mr. Gresley had called every day since the accident in order to cheer the sufferer, to whom he had been greatly attracted.  Hugh had seen him once, and afterwards had never felt strong enough to repeat the process.

“Must you go back?” he asked.

“No,” she said.  “Mrs. Loftus and he are great friends.  I should be rather in the way.”

And she sat down by him.

“Are you feeling ill?” she said, gently, noticing his careworn face.

“No,” he replied.  “I was only thinking.  I was thinking,” he went on, after a pause, “that I would give everything I possess not to have done something which I have done.”

Rachel looked straight in front of her.  The confession was coming at last.  Her heart beat.

“I have done wrong,” he said, slowly, “and I am suffering for it, and I shall suffer more before I’ve finished.  But the worst is—­”

She looked at him.

“The worst is that I can’t bear all the consequences myself.  An innocent person will pay the penalty of my sin.”

Hugh’s voice faltered.  He was thinking of his mother.

Rachel’s mind instantly flew to Lord Newhaven.

“Then Lord Newhaven drew the short lighter,” she thought, and she colored deeply.