To speculate was to wound himself
in vain. He must know. Therefore he asked her with grim frankness:
"Is it Peter Blood?"
"Peter Blood?" she echoed. At first she did not understand the
purport of his question. When understanding came, a flush suffused
her face.
"I do not know," she said, faltering a little.
This was hardly a truthful answer. For, as if an obscuring veil had
suddenly been rent that morning, she was permitted at last to see
Peter Blood in his true relations to other men, and that sight,
vouchsafed her twenty-four hours too late, filled her with pity and
regret and yearning.
Lord Julian knew enough of women to be left in no further doubt.
He bowed his head so that she might not see the anger in his eyes,
for as a man of honour he took shame in that anger which as a human
being he could not repress.
And because Nature in him was stronger - as it is in most of us -
than training, Lord Julian from that moment began, almost in spite
of himself, to practise something that was akin to villainy. I
regret to chronicle it of one for whom - if I have done him any sort
of justice - you should have been conceiving some esteem.
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