A silence had fallen between Baskerville and Elizabeth, while listening to the commotion outside. A sudden wild impulse came to Elizabeth to tell Baskerville, of all men, her struggles about consenting to marry Clavering, without mentioning any name. Baskerville had been kind and helpful to her; he had come to her immediately at her request; and before she knew it she was saying to him, in a nervous voice: “I could be free from all these anxieties about money, my father could end his days in ease—all, all if I would but marry a divorced man—a man to be divorced, that is. And after all, he never was actually married, it was a mistake.”
Baskerville had been looking abstractedly out of the window at the carriages flashing past, but at this he turned quickly to Elizabeth. “You mean Senator Clavering?” Baskerville was a remarkably self–contained man, but in his burst of surprise the name fell from his lips before he knew it.
Elizabeth sat dumb. She had yielded to a mad impulse, and would have given a year of her life to have unsaid those words. Baskerville hesitated for a minute or two, and then rose. Elizabeth’s silence, the painful flushing of her face, her whole attitude of conscious guilt, proclaimed the truth of Baskerville’s surmise. He looked at her in pity and commiseration. She had just told him enough to make him understand how great the temptation was to her; and yet so far she had not yielded. But that she would yield he had not the least doubt. And what untold miseries would not she, or any woman like her, bring upon herself by marrying Clavering!
It was a question which neither one of them could discuss, and Baskerville’s only words were: “I have no right to offer you my advice, except on the point upon which you have consulted me, but I beg of you to consider well what you are thinking of. You are hovering over dreadful possibilities for yourself. Good night.”
He was going, but Elizabeth ran and grasped his arm. “You won’t speak of this to Miss Clavering! You must not do it! You have no right!”
Baskerville smiled rather bitterly. Whether Elizabeth were afraid or ashamed he did not know—probably both.
“Certainly I shall not,” he said, and to Elizabeth’s ears his tone expressed the most entire contempt.