"It is a trifle difficult to do--to play my part, when all the world is saying, 'he married her for her money,' and shows me scant regard in consequence."
"Why the devil need you care what the world says!"
"I don't--the world may go hang. But the question is, how long can the man retain the woman's esteem, with such a handicap."
"Ah! that is easy! so long as he retains her love."
"It depends entirely on yourself.--If you start with it, you can hold it, if you take the trouble to try."
"You're a strong partisan!" Croyden laughed, as they entered Clarendon.
"Well, I'll tell you what you are if you don't marry Elaine Cavendish," Macloud interrupted--"You're an unmitigated fool!"
"Assuming that Miss Cavendish would marry me."
"You're not likely to marry her, otherwise," retorted Macloud, as he went up the stairs. On the landing he halted and looked down at Croyden in the hall below. "And if you don't take your chance, the chance she has deliberately offered you by coming to Hampton, you are worse than----" and, with an expressive gesture, he resumed the ascent.
"How do you know she came down here just for that purpose?" Croyden called.
But all that came back in answer, as Macloud went down the hall and into his room, was the whistled air from a popular opera, then running in the Metropolis.
"Ev'ry little movement has a meaning all its own, Ev'ry thought and action----"
"I won't believe it," Croyden reflected, "that Elaine would do anything so utterly unconventional as to seek me out deliberately.... I might have had a chance if--Oh, damn it all! why didn't we find the old pirate's box--it would have clarified the whole situation."
As he changed into his evening clothes, he went over the matter, carefully, and laid out the line of conduct that he intended to follow.
He would that Elaine had stayed away from Hampton. It was putting him to too severe a test--to be with her, to be subject to her alluring loveliness, and, yet, to be unmoved. It is hard to see the luscious fruit within one's reach and to refrain from even touching it. It grew harder the more he contemplated it....
"It's no use fighting against it, here!" he exclaimed, going into Macloud's room, and throwing himself on a chair. "I'm going to cut the whole thing."