Voice and look constrained Harvey to believe this.  He spoke more sympathetically.

‘It’s better that it happened before than after.’

’I’ve tried to think that, but I can’t.  Afterwards, I could have made her believe me and forgive me.’

‘That seems to me more than doubtful.’

‘But why should it have happened at all?’ cried Cecil, in the tone of despairing bitterness.  ’Did I deserve it?  Haven’t I behaved better, more kindly, than most men would have done?  Isn’t it just because I was too good-natured that this has come on me?’

‘I myself readily take that view,’ answered Rolfe.  ’But I can perfectly understand why Miss Winter doesn’t.’

‘So can I —­ so can I,’ groaned Cecil.  ’It’s in her nature.  And do you suppose I haven’t cursed myself for deceiving her?  The thought has made me miserable, often enough.  I never dreamt she would get to know of it; but it weighed upon me all the same.  Yet who was the cause of it, really and truly?  I’m glad I could keep myself from saying all I thought.  She wouldn’t have understood; I should only have looked more brutal in her eyes.  But if she had married me when she might have done! There was the wrong that led to everything else.’

Harvey nodded and muttered.

’At one and twenty she might have taken her own way.  I wasn’t a penniless adventurer.  My name is as good as hers.  We could have lived well enough on my income, until I found a way of increasing it, as I should have done.  Girls don’t know what they are doing when they make men wait year after year.  No one can tell them.  But I begged —­ I prayed to her —­ I said all I dared.  It was her cursed father and mother!  If I had had three thousand, instead of three hundred, a year, they would have rushed her into marriage.  No! we must have a big house, like their own, and a troop of thieving servants, or we were eternally disgraced. How I got the money didn’t matter, so long as I got it.  And she hadn’t courage —­ she thought it wrong to defy them.  As if the wrong wasn’t in giving way to such a base superstition!  I believe she has seen that since her father’s death.  And now ——­’

He broke down, shaking and choking in an agony of sobs.  Harvey could only lay a kind hand upon him; there was no verbal comfort to offer.  Presently Cecil talked on again, and so they sat together as twilight passed into darkness.  Rolfe would gladly have taken the poor fellow home with him, out of solitude with its miseries and dangers, but Cecil refused.  Eventually they walked westward for a few miles; then Morphew, with a promise to see his friend next day, turned back into the crowd.

CHAPTER 8

Alma was walking on the sea-road at Penzance, glad to be quite alone, yet at a loss how to spend the time.  Rolfe had sailed for Scilly, and would be absent for two or three days; Mrs. Frothingham, with Hughie for companion, was driving to Marazion.  Why —­ Alma asked herself —­ had she wished to be left alone this morning?  Some thought had glimmered vaguely in her restless mind; she could not recover it.