There was a short silence at the end of Jeffray’s confessional. Wilson sat motionless in his chair, pulling at his pipe and staring out of the window.
Jeffray sprang up and began to pace the room. The telling of Bess’s story seemed to have rendered the past more vivid and real to him, the passion of the present more flowing and tumultuous.
“You are wondering what I am going to do?” he asked.
“Exactly, sir, exactly,” said Wilson, bluntly, yet without cynicism.
Jeffray stayed his striding from wall to wall, and stood with one hand gripping the back of the painter’s chair.
“The woman’s life is in danger,” he said.
“Her husband has to be considered. She shall not go back to him.”
Dick Wilson swung himself up out of his chair, and stood staring at Jeffray with a frown upon his face. The two men looked each other in the eyes without flinching.
“Doubtless you think me mad, Dick,” said Jeffray, quietly.
Wilson bowed down his head and half turned towards the window. He laid his pipe upon the sill, thrust his hands into his breeches-pockets, and stood with sloped shoulders, the attitude of a man bowed down by thought. He appeared almost afraid of facing Jeffray. There was so much grimness in the dénouement that he flinched for the moment from hazarding an opinion.
“We have taken a night to search our hearts.”
Wilson was not one of those creatures who carry their prejudices and opinions about with them like samples of snuff and insist on presenting them to friends and acquaintances. He was not a moral person in the ecclesiastical sense. A man of the world, he knew the thousand entanglements that are cast about those who dare to depart from the paths of propriety.
“Have you thought the matter over, sir?” he said at last, laying his hand with a look of affection on Jeffray’s shoulder.
“I am ready to face it, Dick,” he answered.
“It is a great lottery, sir—a great lottery.”
Jeffray’s lips twitched, but his face never lost its determination.
“I love this woman, Dick,” he said, simply; “I would risk my immortal soul for her. How can I send her back to this brute of a husband? What have I to lose in Sussex? If poor Lot dies, I cannot rest here with his blood upon my hands. The girl’s life, too, is in danger. They meant to shoot her, Dick—shoot her—by Heaven, that they shall not! How can I turn her away at such an hour?”