It was too late now, the man was in Brighton. To-morrow? Elated with what he deemed “duty,” with what he deemed “for the sake of the girl,” he strode about, thinking of “the ruffian”; no thought came to him of how much of the sin, if sin there was, had originated in Maggie; he saw her merely as a poor little thing, led like a lamb. Following the idea of saving came the idea of possession. When she clung to the husband she would tremble at the danger she had escaped. Their home, their table, their fireside; protection from evil, now all wild winds might rage--they would be safe. The vision was constitutional and characteristic of his soul. He was out of thought of all but himself, his dream evolved in pure idea, removed from and independent of all limitations--out of concern of the world's favour--Mount Rorke, Mr. Brookes, or even the girl's grace. As this temper passed, as reality again interposed, and as he saw the garden with Maggie leaving him for another, he viewed her conduct suddenly in relation to himself. What did she mean by treating him so, and for whom? One day he would be Lord Mount Rorke! The Brookes knew nobody. He had only met a lot of cads at their house; they did not know any one but cads. The Brookes were cads! The father was a vulgar old City man, who talked about money and bought ridiculous pictures. The girls, too, were vulgar and coarse. God only knew how many lovers they had not had. Willy was the best of the bunch, but he was a fool. His miserliness and his vegetable shop--hateful! The whole place was hateful; he wished he had never come there; since he had been there he had never been treated even as a gentleman. The Brookes had treated him shamefully.
The skeleton of Frank's soul is easy to trace in this mental crisis--his quixotism, his wish to sally forth and save women, his yearning for a pretty little wife, who would sit on his knee and kiss him, saying, “Poor old boy, you are tired now;” therefore an emotional and distorted apprehension of things, a tendency to think himself a wronged and persecuted person, and under much bravado and swagger the cringe that is so inveterate in the Celt.
Next morning he thought of her lightly, without bitterness and almost without desire; but after breakfast his heart began to ache again. He strove to read, he went to his studio, he went to Brighton; but he saw Maggie in all things. She was with him--a sort of vague pain that kept him strangely conscious of life.