Of course he preferred it.  Was he not essentially good-natured?  Would he not, at any ordinary season, go out of his way to do a kindness?  Did not his soul revolt against every form of injustice?  Whom had he ever injured?  For his humanity, no less than for his urbanity, he claimed a noteworthy distinction among young men of the time.

And there lay the pity of it.  But for Nancy’s self-abandonment, he might have come to love her in good earnest.  As it was, the growth of their intimacy had been marked with singular, unanticipated impulses on his side, impulses quite inconsistent with heartless scheming.  In the compunctious visitings which interrupted his love-making at least twice, there was more than a revolt of mere honesty, as he recognised during his brief flight to London.  Had she exercised but the common prudence of womanhood!

Why, that she did not, might tell both for and against her.  Granting that she lacked true dignity, native refinement, might it not have been expected that artfulness would supply their place?  Artful fencing would have stamped her of coarse nature.  But coarseness she had never betrayed; he had never judged her worse than intellectually shallow.  Her self-surrender might, then, indicate a trait worthy of admiration.  Her subsequent behaviour undeniably pleaded for respect.  She acquainted him with the circumstances of her home life, very modestly, perhaps pathetically.  He learnt that her father was not ill to do, heard of her domestic and social troubles, that her mother had been long dead, things weighing in her favour, to be sure.

If only she had loved him less!

It was all over; he was married.  In acting honourably, it seemed probable that he had spoilt his life.  He must be prepared for anything.  Nancy said that she should not, could not, tell her father, yet awhile; but that resolution was of doubtful stability.  For his own part, he thought it clearly advisable that the fact should not become known at Champion Hill; but could he believe Nancy’s assurance that Miss.  Morgan remained in the dark?  Upon one catastrophe, others might naturally follow.

Here, Saturday at noon, came a letter of Nancy’s writing.  A long letter, and by no means a bad one; superior, in fact, to anything he thought she could have written.  It moved him somewhat, but would have moved him more, had he not been legally bound to the writer.  On Sunday she could not come to see him; but on Monday, early in the afternoon—­

Well, there were consolations.  A wise man makes the best of the inevitable.

CHAPTER 3

Since his return he had seen no one, and none of his friends knew where he had been.  A call from some stray Hodiernal would be very unseasonable this Monday afternoon; but probably they were all enjoying their elegant leisure in regions remote from town.  As the hour of Nancy’s arrival drew near, he sat trying to compose himself —­with indifferent success.  At one moment his thoughts found utterance, and he murmured in a strange, bewildered tone—­’My wife.’  Astonishing words!  He laughed at their effect upon him, but unmirthfully.  And his next murmur was—­’The devil!’ A mere ejaculation, betokening his state of mind.