Murchison reflected deeply before he spoke again. "I doubt if she will trouble you very much. It won't be very difficult to compromise with her, she has too much to hide. And now for yourself."
"Yes," groaned the unhappy Pomfret, in a hollow voice. "And now for myself. What do you suggest?"
"There's only one thing to do, and that is to put the past behind you. As long as this woman lives, you can never marry. But many men go through life and remain bachelors, and are not altogether unhappy. You must make up your mind to be one of the bachelors, Jack."
But Jack looked very despairing. The shock had been a terrible one. In spite of the stiff peg he had taken, his face was still livid, and his hands were shaking.
Hugh looked at him anxiously. He was very weak; had the occurrences of this terrible night driven him over the border line that separates sanity from insanity?
Presently he muttered, almost as if to himself, certain disjointed phrases. Hugh caught a few of them, repeated again and again.
"Tied to her for life, she will outlive me, tied to her for life. She will never let me go. My poor family! I have always been a fool, but up to now have never brought disgrace to them. And God forgive me, I was reckoning on the death of my poor old generous aunt, it is idle to say I did not speculate on it. And for what, for what?--the pretended affection, the bought kisses of this adventuress, a card-sharper's decoy, who told me lying tales about the way in which her criminal associate had inherited his money."
He rambled on like this for some quarter of an hour, and Murchison judged it was better to let him ease his mind in such a fashion.
In a way, the poor foolish boy's brain had cleared up to a point; he was able to look the facts squarely in the face. His infatuation might have been so deep that he might, under these damning circumstances, have fallen a victim to her wiles a second time. She would no doubt have been prepared, if he had given her the opportunity, to have sworn her innocence, to have protested that she was the victim of circumstantial evidence, that she had believed what her brother had told her, that she had never been a partner in, or a confidant of, his criminal schemes.