That evening such things
would have been mere hypocrisy, pretences of a desire to keep him for
herself when her whole nature was in revolt at having to be near him. Her
horror now was not that she might lose him, but of the prospect that lay
before her and the road she must tread with him. Trodden it must be;
unless by any chance there were truth, or less than the truth, in what
good Lady Mildmay said.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE IRREVOCABLE.
So far as May Quisante's distress had its rise in her husband's treatment
of Sir Winterton Mildmay, she was entitled to take some comfort from that
gentleman's extreme happiness. He had lost a seat in Parliament, thanks
to Tom Sinnett and the account to which Tom Sinnett had been turned; he
had been caused to represent to the world that the Alethea Printing Press
had lost Professor Maturin's express approval only by the accident of the
Professor's lamented decease. The one wrong he forgot, the other he did
not know. It was a favourite tenet of his that an English gentleman ought
to be able to turn his hand to everything--everything honourable, of
course--and should at once shine in any sphere of practical activity.
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