Now then?"
"Then, madam," proceeded the doctor, "this marriage owes its rise to you.
You will do well to consider whether you are doing them a kindness or an
injury in permitting it. You have deliberately set yourself to frustrate
the hopes of Lord Hartledon and my daughter: will a marriage, thus
treacherously entered into, bring happiness with it?"
"Oh, you wicked man!" cried the dowager. "You would like to call a curse
upon them."
"No," shuddered Dr. Ashton; "if a curse ever attends them, it will not
be through any wish of mine. Lord Hartledon, I knew you as a boy; I have
loved you as a son; and if I speak now, it is as your pastor, and for
your own sake. This marriage looks very like a clandestine one, as though
you were ashamed of the step you are taking, and dared not enter on it in
the clear face of day. I would have you consider that this sort of
proceeding does not usually bring a blessing with it."
If ever Val felt convicted of utter cowardice, he felt so then. All the
wretched sophistry by which he had been beguiled into the step, by which
he had beguiled himself; all the iniquity of his past conduct to Miss
Ashton, rose up before his mind in its naked truth. He dared not reply to
the doctor for very shame. A sorry figure he cut, standing there, Lady
Maude beside him.
"The last time you entered my house, Lord Hartledon, it was to speak of
your coming marriage with Anne--"
"And you would like him to go there again and arrange it," interrupted
the incensed dowager, whose head had begun to nod so vehemently that she
could not stop it.
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