<h3>XXIX</h3>
<p>The effect upon Swithin of the interview with the Bishop had
been a very marked one. He felt that he had good ground for
resenting that dignitary’s tone in haughtily assuming that
all must be sinful which at the first blush appeared to be so,
and in narrowly refusing a young man the benefit of a single
doubt. Swithin’s assurance that he would be able to
explain all some day had been taken in contemptuous
incredulity.</p>
<p>‘He may be as virtuous as his prototype Timothy; but
he’s an opinionated old fogey all the same,’ said St.
Cleeve petulantly.</p>
<p>Yet, on the other hand, Swithin’s nature was so fresh
and ingenuous, notwithstanding that recent affairs had somewhat
denaturalized him, that for a man in the Bishop’s position
to think him immoral was almost as overwhelming as if he had
actually been so, and at moments he could scarcely bear existence
under so gross a suspicion. What was his union with Lady
Constantine worth to him when, by reason of it, he was thought a
reprobate by almost the only man who had professed to take an
interest in him?</p>
<p>Certainly, by contrast with his air-built image of himself as
a worthy astronomer, received by all the world, and the envied
husband of Viviette, the present imputation was
humiliating. The glorious light of this tender and refined
passion seemed to have become debased to burlesque hues by pure
accident, and his æsthetic no less than his ethic taste was
offended by such an anti-climax. He who had soared amid the
remotest grandeurs of nature had been taken to task on a
rudimentary question of morals, which had never been a question
with him at all. This was what the exigencies of an awkward
attachment had brought him to; but he blamed the circumstances,
and not for one moment Lady Constantine.</p>
<p>Having now set his heart against a longer concealment he was
disposed to think that an excellent way of beginning a revelation
of their marriage would be by writing a confidential letter to
the Bishop, detailing the whole case. But it was impossible
to do this on his own responsibility. He still recognized
the understanding entered into with Viviette, before the
marriage, to be as binding as ever,—that the initiative in
disclosing their union should come from her. Yet he hardly
doubted that she would take that initiative when he told her of
his extraordinary reprimand in the churchyard.</p>
<p>This was what he had come to do when Louis saw him standing at
the window. But before he had said half-a-dozen words to
Viviette she motioned him to go on, which he mechanically did,
ere he could sufficiently collect his thoughts on its
advisability or otherwise. He did not, however, go
far. While Louis and his sister were discussing him in the
drawing-room he lingered musing in the churchyard, hoping that
she might be able to escape and join him in the consultation he
so earnestly desired.</p>
<p>She at last found opportunity to do this. As soon as
Louis had left the room and shut himself in upstairs she ran out
by the window in the direction Swithin had taken. When her
footsteps began crunching on the gravel he came forward from the
churchyard door.</p>
<p>They embraced each other in haste, and then, in a few short
panting words, she explained to him that her brother had heard
and witnessed the interview on that spot between himself and the
Bishop, and had told her the substance of the Bishop’s
accusation, not knowing she was the woman in the cabin.</p>
<p>‘And what I cannot understand is this,’ she added;
‘how did the Bishop discover that the person behind the
bed-curtains was a woman and not a man?’</p>
<p>Swithin explained that the Bishop had found the bracelet on
the bed, and had brought it to him in the churchyard.</p>
<p>‘O Swithin, what do you say? Found the coral
bracelet? What did you do with it?’</p>
<p>Swithin clapped his hand to his pocket.</p>
<p>‘Dear me! I recollect—I left it where it lay
on Reuben Heath’s tombstone.’</p>
<p>‘Oh, my dear, dear Swithin!’ she cried
miserably. ‘You have compromised me by your
forgetfulness. I have claimed the article as mine. My
brother did not tell me that the Bishop brought it from the
cabin. What can I, can I do, that neither the Bishop nor my
brother may conclude <i>I</i> was the woman there?’</p>
<p>‘But if we announce our marriage—’</p>
<p>‘Even as your wife, the position was too
undignified—too I don’t know what—for me ever
to admit that I was there! Right or wrong, I must declare
the bracelet was not mine. Such an escapade—why, it
would make me ridiculous in the county; and anything rather than
that!’</p>
<p>‘I was in hope that you would agree to let our marriage
be known,’ said Swithin, with some disappointment.
‘I thought that these circumstances would make the reason
for doing so doubly strong.’</p>
<p>‘Yes. But there are, alas, reasons against it
still stronger! Let me have my way.’</p>
<p>‘Certainly, dearest. I promised that before you
agreed to be mine. My reputation—what is it!
Perhaps I shall be dead and forgotten before the next transit of
Venus!’</p>
<p>She soothed him tenderly, but could not tell him why she felt
the reasons against any announcement as yet to be stronger than
those in favour of it. How could she, when her feeling had
been cautiously fed and developed by her brother Louis’s
unvarnished exhibition of Swithin’s material position in
the eyes of the world?—that of a young man, the scion of a
family of farmers recently her tenants, living at the homestead
with his grandmother, Mrs. Martin.</p>
<p>To soften her refusal she said in declaring it, ‘One
concession, Swithin, I certainly will make. I will see you
oftener. I will come to the cabin and tower frequently; and
will contrive, too, that you come to the house
occasionally. During the last winter we passed whole weeks
without meeting; don’t let us allow that to happen
again.’</p>
<p>‘Very well, dearest,’ said Swithin
good-humouredly. ‘I don’t care so terribly much
for the old man’s opinion of me, after all. For the
present, then, let things be as they are.’</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the youth felt her refusal more than he owned;
but the unequal temperament of Swithin’s age, so soon
depressed on his own account, was also soon to recover on hers,
and it was with almost a child’s forgetfulness of the past
that he took her view of the case.</p>
<p>When he was gone she hastily re-entered the house. Her
brother had not reappeared from upstairs; but she was informed
that Tabitha Lark was waiting to see her, if her ladyship would
pardon the said Tabitha for coming so late. Lady
Constantine made no objection, and saw the young girl at
once.</p>
<p>When Lady Constantine entered the waiting-room behold, in
Tabitha’s outstretched hand lay the coral ornament which
had been causing Viviette so much anxiety.</p>
<p>‘I guessed, on second thoughts, that it was yours, my
lady,’ said Tabitha, with rather a frightened face;
‘and so I have brought it back.’</p>
<p>‘But how did you come by it, Tabitha?’</p>
<p>‘Mr. Glanville gave it to me; he must have thought it
was mine. I took it, fancying at the moment that he handed
it to me because I happened to come by first after he had found
it.’</p>
<p>Lady Constantine saw how the situation might be improved so as
to effect her deliverance from this troublesome little web of
evidence.</p>
<p>‘Oh, you can keep it,’ she said brightly.
‘It was very good of you to bring it back. But keep
it for your very own. Take Mr. Glanville at his word, and
don’t explain. And, Tabitha, divide the strands into
two bracelets; there are enough of them to make a
pair.’</p>
<p>The next morning, in pursuance of his resolution, Louis
wandered round the grounds till he saw the girl for whom he was
waiting enter the church. He accosted her over the
wall. But, puzzling to view, a coral bracelet blushed on
each of her young arms, for she had promptly carried out the
suggestion of Lady Constantine.</p>
<p>‘You are wearing it, I see, Tabitha, with the
other,’ he murmured. ‘Then you mean to keep
it?’</p>
<p>‘Yes, I mean to keep it.’</p>
<p>‘You are sure it is not Lady Constantine’s?
I find she has one like it.’</p>
<p>‘Quite sure. But you had better take it to her,
sir, and ask her,’ said the saucy girl.</p>
<p>‘Oh, no; that’s not necessary,’ replied
Louis, considerably shaken in his convictions.</p>
<p>When Louis met his sister, a short time after, he did not
catch her, as he had intended to do, by saying suddenly, ‘I
have found your bracelet. I know who has got it.’</p>
<p>‘You cannot have found it,’ she replied quietly,
‘for I have discovered that it was never lost,’ and
stretching out both her hands she revealed one on each, Viviette
having performed the same operation with her remaining bracelet
that she had advised Tabitha to do with the other.</p>
<p>Louis was mystified, but by no means convinced. In spite
of this attempt to hoodwink him his mind returned to the subject
every hour of the day. There was no doubt that either
Tabitha or Viviette had been with Swithin in the cabin. He
recapitulated every case that had occurred during his visit to
Welland in which his sister’s manner had been of a colour
to justify the suspicion that it was she. There was that
strange incident in the corridor, when she had screamed at what
she described to be a shadowy resemblance to her late husband;
how very improbable that this fancy should have been the only
cause of her agitation! Then he had noticed, during
Swithin’s confirmation, a blush upon her cheek when he
passed her on his way to the Bishop, and the fervour in her
glance during the few moments of the imposition of hands.
Then he suddenly recalled the night at the railway station, when
the accident with the whip took place, and how, when he reached
Welland House an hour later, he had found no Viviette
there. Running thus from incident to incident he increased
his suspicions without being able to cull from the circumstances
anything amounting to evidence; but evidence he now determined to
acquire without saying a word to any one.</p>
<p>His plan was of a cruel kind: to set a trap into which the
pair would blindly walk if any secret understanding existed
between them of the nature he suspected.</p>
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