"It is well that there should be some kindness where there has been so much that is unkind. Forgive me, Miss Carbury, if I speak plainly to you. Of course you will go back to him. Of course you will be his wife. You have told me that you love him dearly, as plainly as I have told you the same story of myself. Your coming here would of itself have declared it, even if I did not see your satisfaction at my account of his treachery to me."

"Oh, Mrs. Hurtle, do not say that of me!"

"But it is true, and I do not in the least quarrel with you on that account. He has preferred you to me, and as far as I am concerned there is an end of it. You are a girl, whereas I am a woman,--and he likes your youth. I have undergone the cruel roughness of the world, which has not as yet touched you; and therefore you are softer to the touch. I do not know that you are very superior in other attractions; but that has sufficed, and you are the victor. I am strong enough to acknowledge that I have nothing to forgive in you;--and am weak enough to forgive all his treachery." Hetta was now holding the woman by the hand, and was weeping, she knew not why. "I am so glad to have seen you," continued Mrs. Hurtle, "so that I may know what his wife was like. In a few days I shall return to the States, and then neither of you will ever be troubled further by Winifred Hurtle. Tell him that if he will come and see me once before I go, I will not be more unkind to him than I can help."

When Hetta did not decline to be the bearer of this message she must have at any rate resolved that she would see Paul Montague again,--and to see him would be to tell him that she was again his own. She now got herself quickly out of the room, absolutely kissing the woman whom she had both dreaded and despised. As soon as she was alone in the street she tried to think of it all. How full of beauty was the face of that American female,--how rich and glorious her voice in spite of a slight taint of the well-known nasal tw.a.n.g;--and above all how powerful and at the same time how easy and how gracious was her manner! That she would be an unfit wife for Paul Montague was certain to Hetta, but that he or any man should have loved her and have been loved by her, and then have been willing to part from her, was wonderful. And yet Paul Montague had preferred herself, Hetta Carbury, to this woman! Paul had certainly done well for his own cause when he had referred the younger lady to the elder.

Of her own quarrel of course there must be an end. She had been unjust to the man, and injustice must of course be remedied by repentance and confession. As she walked quickly back to the railway station she brought herself to love her lover more fondly than she had ever done. He had been true to her from the first hour of their acquaintance. What truth higher than that has any woman a right to desire? No doubt she gave to him a virgin heart. No other man had ever touched her lips, or been allowed to press her hand, or to look into her eyes with unrebuked admiration. It was her pride to give herself to the man she loved after this fashion, pure and white as snow on which no foot has trodden. But, in taking him, all that she wanted was that he should be true to her now and henceforward. The future must be her own work. As to the "now," she felt that Mrs.

Hurtle had given her sufficient a.s.surance.

She must at once let her mother know this change in her mind. When she re-entered the house she was no longer sullen, no longer anxious to be silent, very willing to be gracious if she might be received with favour,--but quite determined that nothing should shake her purpose. She went at once into her mother's room, having heard from the boy at the door that Lady Carbury had returned.

"Hetta, wherever have you been?" asked Lady Carbury.

"Mamma," she said, "I mean to write to Mr. Montague and tell him that I have been unjust to him."

"Hetta, you must do nothing of the kind," said Lady Carbury, rising from her seat.

"Yes, mamma. I have been unjust, and I must do so."

"It will be asking him to come back to you."

"Yes, mamma:--that is what I mean. I shall tell him that if he will come, I will receive him. I know he will come. Oh, mamma, let us be friends, and I will tell you everything. Why should you grudge me my love?"

"You have sent him back his brooch," said Lady Carbury hoa.r.s.ely.

"He shall give it me again. Hear what I have done. I have seen that American lady."

"Mrs. Hurtle!"

"Yes;--I have been to her. She is a wonderful woman."

"And she has told you wonderful lies."

"Why should she lie to me? She has told me no lies. She said nothing in his favour."

"I can well believe that. What can any one say in his favour?"

"But she told me that which has a.s.sured me that Mr. Montague has never behaved badly to me. I shall write to him at once. If you like I will show you the letter."

"Any letter to him, I will tear," said Lady Carbury, full of anger.

"Mamma, I have told you everything, but in this I must judge for myself." Then Hetta, seeing that her mother would not relent, left the room without further speech, and immediately opened her desk that the letter might be written.

CHAPTER XCII.

HAMILTON K. FISKER AGAIN.

Ten days had pa.s.sed since the meeting narrated in the last chapter,--ten days, during which Hetta's letter had been sent to her lover, but in which she had received no reply,--when two gentlemen met each other in a certain room in Liverpool, who were seen together in the same room in the early part of this chronicle. These were our young friend Paul Montague, and our not much older friend Hamilton K.

Fisker. Melmotte had died on the 18th of July, and tidings of the event had been at once sent by telegraph to San Francisco. Some weeks before this Montague had written to his partner, giving his account of the South Central Pacific and Mexican Railway Company,--describing its condition in England as he then believed it to be,--and urging Fisker to come over to London. On receipt of a message from his American correspondent he had gone down to Liverpool, and had there awaited Fisker's arrival, taking counsel with his friend Mr.

Ramsbottom. In the meantime Hetta's letter was lying at the Beargarden, Paul having written from his club and having omitted to desire that the answer should be sent to his lodgings. Just at this moment things at the Beargarden were not well managed. They were indeed so ill managed that Paul never received that letter,--which would have had for him charms greater than those of any letter ever before written.

"This is a terrible business," said Fisker, immediately on entering the room in which Montague was waiting him. "He was the last man I'd have thought would be cut up in that way."

"He was utterly ruined."

"He wouldn't have been ruined,--and couldn't have thought so if he'd known all he ought to have known. The South Central would have pulled him through almost anything if he'd have understood how to play it."

"We don't think much of the South Central here now," said Paul.

"Ah;--that's because you've never above half spirit enough for a big thing. You nibble at it instead of swallowing it whole,--and then, of course, folks see that you're only nibbling. I thought that Melmotte would have had spirit."

"There is, I fear, no doubt that he had committed forgery. It was the dread of detection as to that which drove him to destroy himself."

"I call it dam clumsy from beginning to end;--dam clumsy. I took him to be a different man, and I feel more than half ashamed of myself because I trusted such a fellow. That chap Cohenlupe has got off with a lot of swag. Only think of Melmotte allowing Cohenlupe to get the better of him!"

"I suppose the thing will be broken up now at San Francisco,"

suggested Paul.

"Bu'st up at Frisco! Not if I know it. Why should it be bu'st up?

D'you think we're all going to smash there because a fool like Melmotte blows his brains out in London?"

"He took poison."

"Or p'ison either. That's not just our way. I'll tell you what I'm going to do; and why I'm over here so uncommon sharp. These shares are at a'most nothing now in London. I'll buy every share in the market. I wired for as many as I dar'd, so as not to spoil our own game, and I'll make a clean sweep of every one of them. Bu'st up! I'm sorry for him because I thought him a biggish man;--but what he's done'll just be the making of us over there. Will you get out of it, or will you come back to Frisco with me?"

In answer to this Paul a.s.serted most strenuously that he would not return to San Francisco, and, perhaps too ingenuously, gave his partner to understand that he was altogether sick of the great railway, and would under no circ.u.mstances have anything more to do with it. Fisker shrugged his shoulders, and was not displeased at the proposed rupture. He was prepared to deal fairly,--nay, generously,--by his partner, having recognized the wisdom of that great commercial rule which teaches us that honour should prevail among a.s.sociates of a certain cla.s.s; but he had fully convinced himself that Paul Montague was not a fit partner for Hamilton K.

Fisker. Fisker was not only unscrupulous himself, but he had a thorough contempt for scruples in others. According to his theory of life, nine hundred and ninety-nine men were obscure because of their scruples, whilst the thousandth man predominated and cropped up into the splendour of commercial wealth because he was free from such bondage. He had his own theories, too, as to commercial honesty. That which he had promised to do he would do, if it was within his power.

He was anxious that his bond should be good, and his word equally so.

But the work of robbing mankind in gross by magnificently false representations, was not only the duty, but also the delight and the ambition of his life. How could a man so great endure a partnership with one so small as Paul Montague? "And now what about Winifred Hurtle?" asked Fisker.

"What makes you ask? She's in London."

"Oh yes, I know she's in London, and Hurdle's at Frisco, swearing that he'll come after her. He would, only he hasn't got the dollars."

"He's not dead then?" muttered Paul.

"Dead!--no, nor likely to die. She'll have a bad time of it with him yet."

"But she divorced him."

"She got a Kansas lawyer to say so, and he's got a Frisco lawyer to say that there's nothing of the kind. She hasn't played her game badly neither, for she's had the handling of her own money, and has put it so that he can't get hold of a dollar. Even if it suited other ways, you know, I wouldn't marry her myself till I saw my way clearer out of the wood."

"I'm not thinking of marrying her,--if you mean that."