John Saltram, the friend whom he had loved, was the
traitor. John Saltram had stolen his promised wife, had come between him
and his fair happy future, and had kept the secret of his guilt in a
dastardly spirit that made the act fifty times blacker than it would have
seemed otherwise.
Sitting in the dreary silence of that sick chamber, a silence broken only
by the painful sound of the sleeper's difficult breathing, many things
came back to his mind; circumstances trivial enough in themselves, but
invested with a grave significance when contemplated by the light of
today's revelation.
He remembered those happy autumn afternoons at Lidford; those long,
drowsy, idle days in which John Saltram had given himself up so entirely
to the pleasure of the moment, with surely something more than mere
sympathy with his friend's happiness. He remembered that last long
evening at the cottage, when this man had been at his best, full of life
and gaiety; and then that sudden departure, which had puzzled him so much
at the time, and yet had seemed no surprise to Marian. It had been the
result of some suddenly-formed resolution perhaps, Gilbert thought.
"Poor wretch! he may have tried to be true to me," he said to himself,
with a sharp bitter pain at his heart.
He had loved this man so well, that even now, knowing himself to have
been betrayed, there was a strange mingling of pity and anger in his
mind, and mixed with these a touch of contempt.
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